Carmilla of Green Gables
by elizasky
Summary: (retelling of *Carmilla* by JS Le Fanu, 1871) Diana Barry is so very lonely until her family takes in a mysterious, red-headed girl who isn't allowed to talk about her past. The girl is strange, but fascinating, with her vivid imagination and passionate declarations. Diana vows eternal friendship. Then the girls of Avonlea begin to die . . .
1. An Early Fright

Let it never be said that I do not commit to a joke.

This story is a mash-up of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's gothic novella _Carmilla_ (1871) and Lucy Maud Montgomery's _Anne of Green Gables_ (1908), with some of my own additions and embroideries here and there. It follows the plot and structure of _Carmilla_ very closely (you can read the original text of _Carmilla_ for free on Project Gutenberg; it is in the public domain). I have kept the chapter titles from _Carmilla_ , along with most of the chapter divisions, though I reserve the right to condense some of the later chapters and add an ending that suits my fancy.

Where I have kept large chunks of text unaltered or only slightly altered, I have italicized them. However, I have also quoted and paraphrased promiscuously throughout the text and have not italicized every borrowed phrase. Please assume that much of the language is borrowed from _Carmilla_.

I dedicate this story to oz diva (read: I assign blame) for pointing me toward the world of crossovers (though I'm posting this on AOGG where it is easier to find).

* * *

 **Carmilla of Green Gables**

* * *

Chapter 1: An Early Fright

* * *

When I was a girl, I lived with my family on the outskirts of the village of Avonlea. We were by no means magnificent people and Orchard Slope was not a castle, but a small income goes a great way in that part of the world, and we counted ourselves among the wealthier inhabitants of our area. We lived comfortably, enjoying many small comforts and luxuries, even in this lonely and primitive place.

Nothing can be more picturesque or solitary than Orchard Slope. It stands on a slight eminence in a forest, with an irregular and shadowy glade before its gate. The red road that passes in front of it skirts a large pond inhabited by many ducks and sailed over by fleets of white water lilies. In yesteryears, people called it Barry's Pond, but to me, it will ever be The Lake of Shining Waters.

Over all this, Orchard Slope stands neat and proper, the warm glow from its windows illuminating the rows of cherry trees that give it its name.

I have said that this is a very lonely place. Judge whether I say truth. The nearest village is Avonlea, nearly two miles to the west. The nearest inhabited house of any sort is the Lynde farm, about a mile down the road, and the next is the Blythe homestead, a similar distance across the Lake of Shining Waters.

I have said "the nearest inhabited house," because there is, only half a mile westward across fields and streams, a ruined farmhouse. Once, it was painted in crisp whites and greens, surrounded by prim Lombary poplars and stately willows, with its quaint front yard swept clear of every stray stick and stone, or so I am told. Now, it is an empty husk of glassless windows and sagging roof, overgrown with brambles and grasses that arch across the rutted lane and peek up through the floorboards of the veranda. Near the crest of the hill, under the largest willow tree on Prince Edward Island, stand the the moldering tombs of the proud family of Cuthbert, now extinct, who once owned the equally desolate house that they called Green Gables.

 _Respecting the cause of the desertion of this striking and melancholy spot, there is a legend which I shall relate to you another time._

I must tell you now about my family, few though we were. There was my father, Mr. George Barry, who was the kindest man on earth, but growing old, and my mother, Mrs. Elizabeth Barry, who was strict, but not unkind. I, at the date of my story, was only sixteen.

My parents and I constituted the family at Orchard Slope. We often had a young French maid or hired boy about the place, though I seldom recalled their names long after they had left us. My younger sister, Minnie May, died of the croup when I was about eleven or twelve years old, and I mourned her loss dreadfully. About the same time, my especial chum, Bertha Blythe, had gone west with her father for the good of his health. With no near neighbors but Mrs. Lynde, I was a dreadfully lonesome girl, particularly in the summertime, when school was out. At school, I had a few young lady friends, pretty nearly of my own age, who were occasional visitors, for longer or shorter terms; and these visits I sometimes returned. Ruby Gillis, blonde and flirtatious; Jane Andrews, plain and practical; Josie Pye, acerbic and quick-tempered.

These were our regular social resources; but of course there were chance visits from other neighbors. _My life was, notwithstanding, rather a solitary one, I can assure you._ Still, I was a rather spoiled girl, whose parents allowed her pretty nearly her own way in everything.

My earliest memory is one which produced a terrible impression upon my mind. Indeed, it has never been effaced. Some people will think it so trifling that it should not be recorded here. You will see, however, by-and-by, why I mention it.

When I was a child of six years, I inhabited the nursery on the upper floor of Orchard Slope. One night, I awoke to find myself utterly alone. _I was not frightened, for I was one of those happy children who are studiously kept in ignorance of ghost stories, of fairy tales, and of all such lore as makes us cover up our heads when the door cracks suddenly, or the flicker of an expiring candle makes the shadow of a bedpost dance upon the wall, nearer to our faces. I was vexed and insulted at finding myself, as I conceived, neglected, and I began to whimper, preparatory to a hearty bout of roaring; when to my surprise, I saw a solemn, but very pretty face looking at me from the side of the bed. It was that of a young girl who was kneeling, with her hands under the coverlet._ She was a very striking personage, with skin as clear and white as the narcissi in my mother's garden and hair a fiery color that reminded me of tiger lilies. She was slender and sweet, with seven tiny freckles scattered over the bridge of her shapely nose.

 _I looked at her with a kind of pleased wonder, and ceased whimpering. She caressed me with her hands, and lay down beside me on the bed, and drew me towards her, smiling; I felt immediately delightfully soothed, and fell asleep again. I was wakened by a sensation as if two needles ran into my breast very deep at the same moment, and I cried loudly. The girl started back, with her eyes fixed on me, and then slipped down upon the floor, and, as I thought, hid herself under the bed._

 _I was now for the first time frightened, and I yelled with all my might and main._ _My mother and father came running in, and hearing my story, they made light of it, soothing me all they could meanwhile. But, child as I was, I could perceive that their faces were pale with an unwonted look of anxiety, and I saw them look under the bed, and about the room, and peep under tables and pluck open cupboards_ ; and the maid whispered, _"Lay your hand along that hollow in the bed; someone did lie there; the place is still warm."_ My father scolded her and warned her not to talk such nonsense, as the warm place was only the spot where my favorite tabby cat was wont to curl up beside me.

 _I remember all three examining my chest, where I told them I felt the puncture, and pronouncing that there was no sign visible that any such thing had happened to me._

 _I was very nervous for a long time after this._ Dr. Blair was called in, but there was little he could do but suggest that someone sit with me at all times until I should feel secure enough to be left alone.

 _I remember my father coming up and standing at the bedside, and talking cheerfully, and asking me a number of questions, and laughing very heartily at one of the answers; and patting me on the shoulder, and kissing me, and telling me not to be frightened, that it was nothing but a dream and could not hurt me._ My mother tried to comfort me by _assuring me that it was she who had come and looked at me, and lain down beside me in the bed, and that I must have been half-dreaming not to have known her face._

 _But I was not comforted, for I knew the visit of the strange girl was not a dream; and I was awfully frightened._

After it became clear that my terror would not be assuaged by tender falsehoods, my parents sent for the Reverend Mr. Allan and Mrs. Allen to pray in my chamber. Mr. Allan was very sweet to me, asking me how I fared and speaking gently to me. He told me that we would pray, and joined my hands together, and desired me to say, softly, _"Lord hear all good prayers for us, for Jesus' sake."_ I think these were the very words, for I often repeated them to myself in after years.

Then Mr. Allan kneeled, and his wife and my parents with him, _and he prayed aloud with an earnest quavering voice for, what appeared to me, a long time._

 _I forget all my life preceding that event, and for some time after it is all obscure also, but the scenes I have just described stand out vivid as the isolated pictures of the phantasmagoria surrounded by darkness._


	2. A Guest

**A Guest**

* * *

 _I am now going to tell you something so strange that it will require all your faith in my veracity to believe my story. It is not only true, nevertheless, but truth of which I have been an eyewitness._

 _It was a sweet summer evening, and my father asked me, as he sometimes did, to take a little ramble with him_ along the shore of the Lake of Shining Waters.

He looked sorrowful, and when I asked him whatever was the matter, he said, "I have had a letter from Mr. Blythe. He cannot return to Avonlea as soon as we had hoped."

This was dire news indeed. Mr. Blythe had written some months before that he was quite recovered and that he and Bertha would return to Avonlea in the summer. I had lost many and many an hour imagining my joyous reunion with my dear Bertha, and the happy days we would spend together. Such anticipation had furnished my day dreams for many weeks, and I was cruelly disappointed with the news that it was not to be.

"How soon do they come?" I asked.

"Not till autumn," my father answered. This was a further blow, but it did not account for my father's sorrowful air.

"What is it, Father?" I asked.

He took my hand and looked into my eyes with the most mournful expression. "Diana," he said, "I am so very sorry to tell you this. Bertha Blythe is dead."

 _I was very much shocked._ Mr. Blythe had mentioned in his last letter, six or seven weeks before, that Bertha was perfectly well and looking forward to returning home to Avonlea. Oh, my dear friend! Though I had not seen her for three years, I had eagerly anticipated our reacquaintance. Bitter tears welled in my eyes, both for my friend's misfortune and for my own loss.

"Here's Mr. Blythe's letter," my father said, handing it to me. "I'm afraid he is in a very bad way."

 _We sat down on a rude bench, under a group of magnificent_ birch trees. _The sun was setting with all its melancholy splendor behind the sylvan horizon, and the stream that_ led to the Lake of Shining Waters _I have mentioned, wound through many a group of noble trees, almost at our feet, reflecting in its current the fading crimson of the sky._ Mr. Blythe's _letter was so extraordinary, so vehement, and in some places so self-contradictory, that I read it twice over-the second time aloud to my father and was still unable to account for it, except by supposing that grief had unsettled his mind._

It said,

"I have lost my darling daughter, Bertha. I did not understand the danger until it was far too late and now I have lost her!

 _The fiend who betrayed her has done it all. I thought I was receiving into my house innocence, gaiety, a charming companion for my lost Bertha. Heavens! what a fool have I been!  
_

Oh, sweet Bertha! The cleverest of girls, and such a beauty. Never more shall I see your dead mother's hazel eyes reborn in your dear and beloved face!

 _I thank God my child died without a suspicion of the cause of her sufferings. She is gone without so much as conjecturing the nature of her illness, and the accursed passion of the agent of all this misery. I devote my remaining days to tracking and extinguishing a monster._

There is more — much more — to tell, but I dare not commit the awful particulars to paper. I will reveal all when I return to Avonlea. Farewell. Pray for me, dear friend."

The sun had now set, and it was twilight by the time I had returned Mr. Blythe's letter to my father.

 _It was a soft clear evening, and we loitered, speculating upon the possible meanings of the violent and incoherent sentences which I had just been reading._ We walked round and round the pond, comforting one another as best we could.

We walked together until we came to the road, where a picturesque bridge crosses a narrow point in the pond. _Beyond the bridge an abrupt eminence rises, covered with trees, and showing in the shadows some grey ivy-clustered rocks. Over the sward and low grounds a thin film of mist was stealing like smoke, marking the distances with a transparent veil; and here and there we could see the river faintly flashing in the moonlight._

 _No softer, sweeter scene could be imagined. The news I had just heard made it melancholy; but nothing could disturb its character of profound serenity, and the enchanted glory and vagueness of the prospect._

 _My father, who enjoyed the picturesque, and I, stood looking in silence over the expanse beneath us._

At this moment the sound of carriage wheels and hooves upon the road arrested our attention. Around a bend in the road emerged a small trap carrying two women, a lady of some eminence and a girl no older than myself, hurtling along through the red dust at a terrific speed. I do not know what had spooked the horse, but it _came thundering along the road towards us with the speed of a hurricane._

When they reached the bridge, many things happened at once. The horse swerved, the carriage tipped, and a long-drawn scream came from the tumble of upturned equipage and petticoats.

Both Father and I ran toward the scene of utter confusion. The horse was on the ground, trapped in its traces, and the two ladies had been thrown wide. The elder lady did not seem to be injured and my father helped her to her feet, but the slender girl was laid out against the bank of the pond, having been rendered unconscious.

I knelt beside her, fearing that she might be dead. What a striking personage she was! Pale as alabaster, with hair the color of a flaming sunset, with a graceful form I admired more than any I had beheld before. I felt myself drawn to her immediately, though we were as yet strangers.

My father joined us, pressing his fingers to the girl's wrist and discovering a pulse, faint and irregular but undoubtedly still distinguishable.

"She's alive," my father assured the woman, who clasped her hands in a momentary transport of gratitude. "Come, we must take her to Orchard Slope."

I dashed along the road, calling out for our hired man to come see to the horse, and raising the alarm at Orchard Slope. My father followed along behind, carrying the girl while the woman wrung her hands and moaned piteously.

When Father had settled the girl on the sofa in our sitting room and Mother had brought a cloth to sponge her brow, I was surprised to see that the woman's agitation did not abate. She paced up and down the room, wailing, even as the girl began to stir.

"Well, this is a pretty pass," she said. "I must — _must_ — be on the next train if I mean to make the ferry and I must — _must_ — make the ferry! Tonight! The child is in no fit state to be moved and there is no time! I dare not delay. Please, where is the nearest inn? Perhaps if I can install her there and come back for her after my business is concluded . . ."

 _I plucked my father by the coat, and whispered earnestly in his ear: "Oh! Father, pray ask her to let her stay with us — it would be so delightful. Do, pray."_

My father frowned, but nodded. "Please, ma'am," he said. "We would be pleased to have your daughter as a guest at Orchard Slope until you are able to arrange for her safe removal elsewhere."

The woman stopped and stared at my father. "She's not . . ." she began, but caught my eye and thought better of whatever it was she had meant to say.

"I cannot do that, sir," she replied instead. "It would be a terrible trespass upon your hospitality."

"No, indeed," my father said with earnest animation. _"It would be a very great kindness at the moment when we most need it. My daughter has just been disappointed by a cruel misfortune, in a visit from which she had long anticipated a great deal of happiness._ There is no inn closer than White Sands and I cannot allow you to transport the girl in her present condition. If you cannot delay your journey, you must leave her here with us. I assure you that we will care for her as if she were our own until you return."

The woman appeared to consider the matter. There was something odd and calculating in her expression as she scrutinized the girl, who was blinking up in some confusion, her luminous gray-green eyes wide with surprise at finding herself in unfamiliar surroundings.

Mother pressed a cup of tea to the girl's lips. She sipped slowly and seemed to revive.

"What is your name, dear?" Mother asked.

 _The girl hesitated for a moment._

 _"Will you please call me Carmilla?" she said eagerly._

 _"Call you Carmilla? Is that your name?"_

"No!" the woman cried abruptly. "Not this foolishness again. Her name is Anne. Anne Shirley."

The vehemence of this declaration surprised me not a little. It seemed clear that the woman did not desire us to know her charge's true identity, nor their relation to one another, which was indeed a curious state of affairs.

It was clear that the woman was eager to be on her way, but there was something very peculiar in her manner. _She beckoned slightly to my father, and withdrew two or three steps with him out of hearing; and talked to him with a fixed and stern countenance, not at all like that with which she had hitherto spoken._

 _I was unspeakably curious to learn what she said, almost in his ear, with so much earnestness and rapidity._

When she had said what she meant to say, my father nodded gravely. What could she have told him, and would I be able to persuade him to reveal what he knew? Already, my mind was turning toward the possibilities, dizzying in their profusion. Was our guest perhaps a princess fleeing an unwanted marriage? An heiress whose identity must be concealed to protect her from kidnap and ransom? The secret child of some eminent person who could not claim her before the world?

The woman crossed to the sofa, where the red-haired girl lay in languid repose. The woman kneeled at her side for a moment and whispered what I took for a benediction in her ear. Then, with a hasty kiss, she stepped through our door and hurried for her carriage. She bounded onto the seat and gave us one last nod in farewell. Then, with a crack of her whip, the carriage lurched forward, the horse _breaking suddenly into a furious canter that threatened soon again to become a gallop, and the carriage whirled away_.

When she had vanished, all attention turned back to our guest.

"Please," the girl pleaded, " _please do call me Carmilla. It can't matter much to you what you call me if I'm only going to be here a little while, can it? And Anne is such an unromantic name_."

" _Anne is a real good plain sensible name_ ," Mother said, gathering up the tea things. " _You've no need to be ashamed of it_."

Presently, Mother went to the kitchen to deposit the tea tray and Father retired to his office, leaving me alone with our guest. I knelt beside the sofa an clasped her slender, white hand to my breast.

"Dearest Carmilla," I said, my voice thick with passion, "welcome to Orchard Slope."


	3. We Compare Notes

**We Compare Notes**

* * *

Our guest raised her head from the pillow, her ruddy tresses bathed in firelight, her starry eyes moving from my own to the furnishings, drinking in her surroundings with bewilderment.

"Where am I? What is this place?" she asked in a very sweet voice.

I consoled her as best I could, assuring her that she was safe at Orchard Slope, and that her guardian would return anon.

At that moment, Mother reappeared and beckoned me to follow her to make up the spare room for our visitor. As I fluffed the pillows and turned back the quilts, I could not help but hope that Carmilla would appreciate the humble accommodations of our abode. After all, who knew what luxuries might be her ordinary fare before she arrived so precipitously on our doorstep? I wished with all my soul that our spare room were furnished with carved oak cabinets and cushions of crimson Utrecht velvet, with gold-framed tapestries on the walls instead of the yellowed picture of George Whitfield.

I need not have worried.

"Oh!" Carmilla exclaimed as Mother and I helped her through the parlor and into a spare nightdress. "To think that I should be afforded the honour of a spare room! Dear ladies, I shall be indebted to you forevermore for this thrill you have bestowed upon me in my hour of sorrow."

"Now, Anne," Mother said, tucking the quilt around Carmilla's delicate form, "you see that you get a good rest. You must be plain exhausted after the evening you've had."

In a sudden burst of inspiration, I nearly shouted. "Mother! May I stay here with Carmilla tonight? She may be lonely, all alone in a strange place without a friend."

Mother considered this for a moment and seemed on the point of refusal when Carmilla herself interceded. "Oh please, Mrs. Barry," she asked clasping her hands piteously under her chin. "I should so love to have Diana beside me."

By this time, my father had come to stand by the door. "If Anne wants Diana with her, let her stay," he said.

My mother agreed, and I could barely contain my squeal of delight. I raced to my room to retrieve my nightdress, flying up and down the stairs as if carried on wings.

Upon my return, I slowed in the parlor, stopping behind the mantel when I heard my parents conversing in low, earnest tones.

"There was something not right about that woman," Mother said.

"Yes," said Father. "I quite agree. I'll go into town tomorrow and see what I can find out about her."

"I dare say Anne can tell us about it tomorrow, if she is sufficiently recovered."

 _"I don't think she will," said my father, with a mysterious smile, and a little nod of his head, as if he knew more about it than he cared to tell._

 _This made me all the more inquisitive as to what had passed between him and Carmilla's guardian, in the brief but earnest interview that had immediately preceded her departure._

"What did she say to you, George?"

My father shrugged. "She apologized for troubling us with the care of her ward, _saying she was in delicate health, and nervous, but not subject to any kind of seizure — she volunteered that — nor to any illusion; being, in fact, perfectly sane."_

 _"How very odd to say all that!"_ Mother _interpolated. "It was so unnecessary."_

 _"She then said, 'I am making a long journey of vital importance — she emphasized the word — rapid and secret; I shall return for my child in three months; in the meantime, she will be silent as to who we are, whence we come, and whither we are traveling.' That is all she said."_

This seemed very strange to me, but did nothing to lessen my delight. When my parents turned toward the spot where I was secreted, I stepped out of the shadows as if I had just then descended the stairs.

"Is our guest quite well, Father?" I asked.

"She is. Her pulse is regular now and she sustained no injury. The shock to her nerves seems to have passed quite harmlessly. I believe she is waiting for you."

 _I was longing to see and talk to her_ , and only waiting till my parents betook themselves to bed. Nevertheless, I must project an air of calm.

"Then I shall turn in for the night," I said.

My parents kissed my cheeks and bid me goodnight, ascending for their own chamber and leaving me to Carmilla.

At the spare room door, I felt unaccountably shy and knocked. "May I come in?" I asked.

"Nothing would delight me more," said the sweet voice from within the chamber.

 _There were candles at the bedside. She was sitting up; her slender, pretty figure enveloped in the soft_ cotton of my old nightgown, faded, but embroidered with flowers.

 _What was it that, as I reached the bedside and had just begun my little greeting, struck me dumb in a moment, and made me recoil a step or two from before her? I will tell you._

 _I saw the very face which had visited me in my childhood at night, which remained so fixed in my memory, and on which I had for so many years so often ruminated with horror, when no one suspected of what I was thinking._

It was indeed the same beautiful, fine-featured face, with its changeable gray-green eyes and the seven adorable freckles scattered over the comely nose like stars of some enticing constellation. Carmilla stared at me for a long moment, her face gradually lightening into an expression of recognition.

 _"How wonderful!" she exclaimed. "Ten years ago, I saw your face in a dream, and it has haunted me ever since."_

 _"Wonderful indeed!" I repeated. "Ten years ago, in vision or reality, I certainly saw you. I could not forget your face. It has remained before my eyes ever since."_

"Oh, Diana," Carmilla said, _clasping her hands and speaking almost in a whisper, "oh, do you think you can like me a little — enough to be my bosom friend?"_

I laughed. "Of course I will like you, dearest. Your coming is as a balm to my lonely soul, and has brought me all the happiness I had thought would ever be denied to me."

 _I took her hand as I spoke. I was a little shy, as lonely people are, but the situation made me eloquent, and even bold. She pressed my hand, she laid hers upon it, and her eyes glowed, as, looking hastily into mine, she smiled again, and blushed._

Carmilla threw back the quilt, beckoning me to climb into the wide spare room bed beside her. I did so, still wondering; and she recounted to me her own story of our first impossible meeting:

 _"I must tell you my vision about you; it is so very strange that you and I should have had, each of the other so vivid a dream, that each should have seen, I you and you me, looking as we do now, when of course we both were mere children. I was a child, about six years old, and I awoke from a confused and troubled dream, and found myself in a room, unlike my nursery, . . . I heard someone crying; and looking up, while I was still upon my knees, I saw you — most assuredly you — as I see you now; a beautiful girl, with_ black eyes and raven tresses _, and lips_ _—_ _your lips — you as you are here._

 _I climbed on the bed and put my arms about you, and I think we both fell asleep. I was aroused by a scream; you were sitting up screaming. I was frightened, and slipped down upon the ground, and, it seemed to me, lost consciousness for a moment; and when I came to myself, I was again in my nursery at home. Your face I have never forgotten since."_

Perhaps I should have been more astonished at this extraordinary speech, but Carmilla's story was so like my own that it had the savor of a memory, rather than a revelation. I related to her my corresponding vision, much to her undisguised wonder.

"Oh, Diana," she sighed, her fine gray-green eyes gazing into mine with a passion I had never before encountered. "Truly you are a kindred spirit. Indeed, _I feel only that I have made your acquaintance ten years ago, and have already a right to your intimacy; at all events it does seem as if we were destined, from our earliest childhood,_ to be bosom friends. _I wonder whether you feel as strangely drawn towards me as I do to you; I have never had a friend — shall I find one now?"_

"Darling Carmilla," I said _with a laugh fore and aft_ , "I feel just as you do, that we are already bosom friends of long acquaintance. I will be your devoted friend forever and ever."

"Will you swear it?" she asked, starry eyes alight.

When I was younger, I would have thought that it was dreadfully wicked to swear, but now, older and wiser, I was indeed prepared to offer my new friend a solemn vow and promise.

We clasped hands, her slender fingers cool against my palms.

" _It ought to be over running water_ ," she said. "We'll just imagine that this bolster is a stream."

With that, she gave a grave nod and intoned, " _I solemnly swear to be faithful to my bosom friend, Diana Barry, as long as the sun and moon shall endure. Now you say it and put my name in._ "

I did as I was bid. Not having any surname to append to _Carmilla_ besides the prosaic falsehood her guardian had insisted upon, I spoke only her single name, as sweet to me as a tiny song. I felt a little shiver go through me as I pledged my undying love, and sealed my vow with a soft kiss upon her cheek.

 _I perceived now something of languor and exhaustion stealing over her, and hastened to bid her good night._

Yet, when I had lain my head upon the pillow, I found that Carmilla tossed and turned ceaselessly. Her discomfort was inescapable and I longed to do her some small service that might set her at her ease.

"Are you well, dearest?" I asked.

" _I am well in body although considerably rumpled in spirit_ ," she replied, sinking deep into the eiderdown pillows.

"How can I be of service to you?" I implored.

She hesitated a moment, than said, "You were so very kind to offer to stay by my side tonight, on my first night in a strange place. How honoured I am to be the object of such gallantry! But I fear that I am too accustomed to solitude to sleep soundly with you here. Will you be very hurt, dearest, if I wish to sleep alone behind a locked door?"

I was not a little surprised by this speech, to say nothing of disappointed. But if my friend's comfort required me to deny myself the pleasure of her company, it was perhaps the least I could do to ensure her happiness.

"Of course," I said, pulling back the quilt. "I shall retire to my own chamber and leave you to your slumber."

 _She held me close in her pretty arms for a moment and whispered in my ear, "Good night, darling, it is very hard to part with you, but good night; tomorrow, but not early, I shall see you again."_

 _She sank back on the pillow with a sigh, and her fine eyes followed me with a fond and melancholy gaze, and she murmured again "Good night, dear friend."_

 _Young people like, and even love, on impulse. I was flattered by the evident, though as yet undeserved, fondness she showed me. I liked the confidence with which she at once received me._ We should be bosom friends from this day forward, whatever our sleeping arrangements.

Thus, I betook myself to bed to pore over the adventures of the day in remembrance and thrill to the promise of tomorrow.


	4. Her Habits

**Her Habits**

* * *

 _I shall begin by describing her._

 _She was above the middle height of women. She was slender, and wonderfully graceful._ Her complexion was pale as june lilies, her chin pointed, her eyes variegated like opals, _green in some lights and moods and gray in others_.

 _Her hair was quite wonderful._ Never before had I beheld a crown of such a striking color, like a burning torch. It was magnificently thick and long and curled prettily at the ends. Over her ears and forehead, it fell in tiny, enticing curls that beckoned me to caress them. It seemed to me like a halo of fire shot through with threads of gold. _I loved to let it down, tumbling with its own weight, as, in her room, she lay back in her chair talking in her sweet low voice, I used to fold and braid it, and spread it out and play with it. Heavens! If I had but known all!_

On the morning after Carmilla came to us, my father set out for town. He returned around noon with Dr. Blair, who examined our guest and pronounced her in perfect health, if somewhat wan.

"Be sure to feed her up, Mrs. Barry," he warned. "I'll want to see a bit more color in those cheeks."

Father and Mother thanked Dr. Blair and took his advice to heart. Over the next week, they showered our visitor with sweets and savories, pressing cakes on her at every opportunity and supplying us with sumptuous picnics that we devoured in the orchard and on the shore of the pond, where _the water was a glory of many shifting hues — the most spiritual shadings of crocus and rose and ethereal green, with other elusive tinting for which no name has ever been found._

It was there, in the fringing groves of fir and maple, that Carmilla revealed her true nature to me, thrilling me with all the workings of her active mind.

"What do you call this place?" Carmilla asked, drinking in the loveliness of the view.

"Barry's Pond," I replied.

Carmilla wrinkled her pretty nose. "Oh, I don't like that name," she declared. " _I shall call it — let me see — the Lake of Shining Waters. Yes, that is the right name for it. I know because of the thrill. When I hit on a name that suits exactly it gives me a thrill."_

I thought perhaps that I might know what she meant, though her manner was strange. Indeed, my whole body seemed to vibrate with the delight of our stimulating conversation. My companion was indeed the most fascinating creature I had ever encountered, and I was quite willing to let her rename all the familiar features of my world, imbuing them with her peculiar magic.

 _There were some particulars about her which did not please me. I will tell you of them._

 _I have told you that her confidence won me the first night I saw her; but I found that she exercised with respect to herself, her guardian, her history, everything in fact connected with her life, plans, and people, an ever wakeful reserve._

I dare say I pressed her on the issue of her history, being quite overcome with an ardent curiosity. I swore that _I would not divulge one syllable of what she told me to any mortal breathing._ But still, she would tell me only three things, which were only enough to whet my appetite to know her better.

 _First: Her name was Carmilla,_ though she allowed that in her youth she u _sed to imagine it was Geraldine_.

 _Second: Her family was very ancient and noble._

 _Third: Her home lay in the direction of the west._

She would tell me no more, though she promised that I would know all in the fullness of time. Still, I pressed her, feeling myself aggrieved that she would not entrust me with her most closely-held secrets. When I began to pout, she would weave beautiful tales of faerie realms and courtly lovers, of daring exploits and heroic rescues. Though I longed to know more of her own history, I found myself quite enchanted by her stories and loved nothing better than to lie with my head in her lap, or hers in mine, weaving romances on the shimmering shores of the Lake of Shining Waters.

 _She used to place her pretty arms about my neck, draw me to her, and laying her cheek to mine, murmur with her lips near my ear, "Dearest, your little heart is wounded_ because I cannot tell you all. _If your dear heart is wounded, my wild heart bleeds with yours. I live in your warm life, and you shall die — die, sweetly die — into mine. I cannot help it; as I draw near to you, you, in your turn, will draw near to others, and learn the rapture of that cruelty, which yet is love; so, for a while, seek to know no more of me and mine, but trust me with all your loving spirit."_

 _And when she had spoken such a rhapsody, she would press me more closely in her trembling embrace, and her lips in soft kisses gently glow upon my cheek._

Sometimes, I felt that I did not understand all that she said. Why should she fear that I would draw near to others? Indeed, I had no need of them when Carmilla was near. When she had been with us two weeks, I realized that not only had I not seen any of my schoolmates in all that time, but that I had not missed them either. I wanted only Carmilla and our idyll on the shore, _her murmured words like a lullaby in my ear, soothing my resistance into a trance, from which I only seemed to recover myself when she withdrew her arms. I experienced a strange tumultuous excitement_ during these interludes, but could not put a name to what I felt. I was only _conscious of a love growing into adoration_.

 _Sometimes after an hour of apathy, my strange and beautiful companion would take my hand and hold it with a fond pressure, renewed again and again; blushing softly, gazing in my face with languid and burning eyes, and breathing so fast that her dress rose and fell with the tumultuous respiration. It was like the ardor of a lover; and with gloating eyes she drew me to her, and her hot lips traveled along my cheek in kisses; and she would whisper, almost in sobs, "You are mine, you shall be mine, you and I are one for ever." Then she would throw herself back upon the grass, with her small hands over her eyes, leaving me trembling._

When I tried to explain these episodes to myself, I found that I had not the words for them. Perhaps it was the strange fact of our ancient but unconventional acquaintance that fostered such an extraordinary intimacy after such a short time. I began to wonder whether perhaps we had known one another in a distant realm, beyond the mists of time, or if we were perhaps twins separated at our birth. I went so far as to ask Mrs. Lynde, visiting one day for tea, whether she recalled the circumstances of my birth, and was dismayed to find that she did. I had little interest in the particulars of a February blizzard and the general consensus in Avonlea that I looked exactly like my mother at a similar age. How cruelly she dashed my hopes and with what verve!

I then began to entertain other possibilities. Perhaps there was indeed an element of disguise in Carmilla's presentation. Was she, perchance, some _boyish lover, come to prosecute his suit in masquerade, with the assistance of a clever old adventuress?_ That would certainly explain the mysterious disappearance of my friend's guardian on the night she came to us, as well as the passion with which Carmilla declared her love for me. _But there were many things against this hypothesis_ , as I duly discovered, _highly interesting as it was to my vanity._

 _Between these passionate moments there were long intervals of commonplace, of gaiety, of brooding melancholy, during which, except that I detected her eyes so full of melancholy fire, following me_ , she might have been any ordinary friend.

 _In some respects her habits were odd. She used to rise very late, generally not till one o'clock, she would then take a cup of tea, but eat nothing._ Then we would go out into the world and roam over the fields and forests of Avonlea. Though her languor kept us close to Orchard Slope at first, she seemed to gain in strength as the days passed, though she ate but little of what was offered to her. Soon, she had grown hale enough for us to venture further afield to all the spots I had known since the days of my earliest childhood. She rechristened them all: the Dryad's Bubble, Lover's Lane, the Haunted Wood, the White Way of Delight. The very landscape seemed newborn to me, exploring it hand-in-hand with my dearest friend.

On the first Sunday she was in residence at Orchard Slope, Carmilla was too ill to attend church. I thought little of it at the time, but began to notice that she never seemed to pray, neither before lying down to sleep, nor when Father said grace over our meals. I began to suspect that she might be a Methodist.

Mrs. Lynde disapproved of Carmilla's ways. I overheard her tell Mother that it was a scandal to let a girl lie abed all morning and to contribute nothing to the household. She was very harsh in her language, calling my friend skinny and homely, so that my face burned with indignation and I nearly flew from my listening-place in the pantry to defend Carmilla's honour. But Mother admonished Mrs. Lynde, reminding her that Carmilla was still convalescing, and that it was their Christian duty to show compassion toward a child who had evidently had little opportunity for a proper bringing-up. Mrs. Lynde was not wholly persuaded on this point, but ungraciously allowed that the question of schedules and responsibilities might be deferred until school convened in September, and that we might be permitted to pass the summer in a state of freedom and innocence.

Alas, such was not to be.

In the third week of Carmilla's sojourn at Orchard Slope, we received word that a terrible tragedy had befallen our little village. My dear friend Ruby Gillis was dead.

Ah, fair Ruby! She of the golden hair and dancing smiles! How should it be that she should leave us so?

I was sorely afflicted by these melancholy tidings. When last I had seen Ruby, she seemed to me the picture of health, with her red, red cheeks and her blue eyes bright as twin stars in her alabaster face. I wept bitter tears over her untimely demise, such that not even Carmilla's sweet caresses could distract me from my despair.

The next day, we attended the funeral, along with nearly all the other inhabitants of Avonlea. I wished to introduce Carmilla to Jane and Josie, but the crowd was so large and pressed so closely in the confines of the Gillis house that I could not find them.

Never before have I beheld such a romantic tableau as Ruby Gillis's funeral. Even Mrs. Lynde was heard to say that Ruby was the handsomest corpse she had ever laid eyes on. Alas, poor Ruby! She lay in the white velvet casket her father had insisted on having for her, dressed all in white as if she were a bride, with her death-pale skin and the golden nimbus of her hair wreathed 'round with delicate flowers. One of her sisters collapsed into hysterical paroxysms of grief, wailing and clutching at the casket so that some of the women had to carry her from the room.

All the while, Carmilla stood at my side, her slim, white hand pressed to mine. When Mr. Allan began to pray, she did not join in, which seemed curious enough. More curious still was her reaction to the funeral hymn. When the gathering began to sing "Safe in the Arms of Jesus," Carmilla suddenly vanished, pushing through the crowd with great agitation. I followed her to the veranda, where she sat rocking with her fingers in her ears.

"Dearest!" I exclaimed. "Whatever is the matter?"

 _She said brusquely, "Don't you perceive how discordant that is?"_

 _"I think it very sweet, on the contrary," I answered, vexed at the interruption, and very uncomfortable_ , lest the other mourners should overhear.

 _"It pierces my ears," said Carmilla, almost angrily, and stopping her ears with her tiny fingers._

She revived a little when the singing was over, but insisted that we hang back in the funeral procession, following along in the wake of the others as they carried sweet Ruby to the graveyard. That is how we came to hear Mrs. Sloane and Mrs. Harmon Andrews discussing the matter in hushed tones.

Mrs. Sloane leaned close to Mrs. Harmon and said in a harsh, carrying whisper, "They say she _fancied she saw a ghost a fortnight ago, and has been dying ever since, till yesterday, when she expired_."

"Fiddlesticks," said Mrs. Harmon. "Ruby Gillis has been dying of galloping consumption for a year at least."

Mrs. Sloane frowned and lowered her voice further, such that I had to hasten my step to keep within hearing range. "True enough, but I heard Dr. Blair tell Mr. Allan that he was quite sure Ruby had another year before it caught up with her. Why should she decline so quickly?"

"That is curious, indeed," mused Mrs. Harmon. "And Ruby isn't the only girl ill this summer. The Pyes say that both Josie and Gertie have been confined to bed these past two weeks. Why, my own poor Jane is home in bed this very minute, though Dr. Blair assures us it is nothing but a summer cold."

They moved off then, but their words had impressed me deeply.

"I hope there is no plague or fever coming," I said as Carmilla and I walked home to Orchard Slope after the burial. "I heard one of Ruby's sisters say that Ruby _thought something seized her by the throat as she lay in her bed, and nearly strangled her. Father says such horrible fancies do accompany some forms of fever._ She looked well enough the last time I saw her; I can scarcely realize that she is gone!"

 _"Well, her funeral is over,"_ Carmilla said in a cool tone that shocked me with its indifference. _"It has made me nervous. Sit down here, beside me; sit close; hold my hand; press it hard-hard-harder."_

We sat in the lee of a fallen log in the Haunted Wood, all green and mossy and secluded.

Carmilla's face underwent a change that _alarmed and even terrified me for a moment. It darkened, and became horribly livid; her teeth and hands were clenched, and she frowned and compressed her lips, while she stared down upon the ground at her feet, and trembled all over with a continued shudder as irrepressible as ague. All her energies seemed strained to suppress a fit, with which she was then breathlessly tugging; and at length a low convulsive cry of suffering broke from her, and gradually the hysteria subsided._

 _"There! That comes of strangling people with hymns!" she said at last. "Hold me, hold me still. It is passing away."_

Perhaps this was the delicate health of which her guardian had spoken. Certainly she had seemed unwell, though I could hardly call it an ordinary illness. But the fit _passed away like a summer cloud_ and afterward _she became unusually animated and chatty, and so we got home._


	5. A Peddler

**A Peddler**

* * *

A day or two after Ruby Gillis's funeral, Carmilla and I lounged in the orchard, plucking cherries and feeding one another until our lips ran red with the sticky juice. Father and the hired man were away in the fields and Mother had gone down to visit Mrs. Lynde, leaving our maid to the washing and us to our diversions.

About mid-morning, a peddler appeared at the gate to Orchard Slope. Mother had warned me often enough not to speak to peddlers, but Carmilla was enchanted with this exotic personage, and I could not say her nay.

He wore a pointed black beard and a broad grin above his many-colored coat. He had a fiddle, an enormous pack, and _a rough spare dog that followed at his heels, but stopped short, suspiciously at the gate, and in a little while began to howl dismally._

The peddler paid his compliments to us and, taking his fiddle, _began to scrape a lively air to which he sang with a merry discord, dancing with ludicrous airs and activity, that made me laugh, in spite of the dog's howling._

When he was finished, he bowed as low as any courtier and was rewarded with our delighted applause.

"Thank ye, kind ladies," he said. "I bring you the finest treasures this bright day."

From his pack, he drew a card of satin ribbons and held one up to my hair.

"For you, my beauty," he crooned. "The finest silk from distant China, as pink as the roses in your lovely cheeks, to adorn your midnight tresses."

I could not help but smile at his blandishments, but his words seemed to vex Carmilla unaccountably.

"Leave off, knave," she cried, swatting his hand away from me.

"Ah," said the peddler, turning his attention to Carmilla. "You do not like ribbons, m'lady? I can see that you are a lady of finer feeling than is commonly found in these parts. Perhaps I can offer you something that I do not ordinarily display among your coarser fellows."

He drew a small silver box from the mysterious recesses of his pack and lingered over its complex lock until Carmilla and I leaned over it, breathless in our anticipation. When the mechanism sprung at last, we beheld several _oblong slips of vellum, with cabalistic ciphers and diagrams upon them._

"What are they?" I asked.

The peddler smiled. "They are charms, m'lady. To ward off evil of all sorts. Ghosts and ghouls are their ordinary foes, but they are likewise protection against the fiercer fiend that has lately begun to stalk these forests."

 _Carmilla instantly purchased one, and so did I._

Perhaps if the peddler had left then, we might have passed the rest of the afternoon in pleasure, but he did not. Instead, he pulled a small bottle from an unseen pocket and brandished it with a flourish. "A gift for you, m'lady," he said, offering it to Carmilla. "The most excellent dye in all the world, guaranteed to turn your hair a deep and permanent black as dark and lovely as your friend's."

Carmilla flushed with indignation, but she did not have time to vent her spleen upon the hapless peddler.

"No!" I cried, knocking the bottle from his grasp and sending it skittering across the grass. "Oh, dear Carmilla, never alter your flaming beauty! Bright star, with your splendour hung aloft in night, stedfast and unchangeable!"*

My friend clasped my hand to her breast, where I could feel its soft fall and swell, the sweet unrest dearer to me than all the luxuries of the fabled East.

"Oh, Diana," she gasped. "Never will I alter even the smallest thing that is a delight to you!"

Hanging on her every breath, I had nearly forgotten the presence of the peddler until he spoke.

"If you are determined to keep your hair as it is," he said, turning a piercing black eye upon us, "perhaps you will at least engage my services as a dentist. I perceive that the young lady _has the sharpest tooth — long, thin, pointed, like an awl, like a needle. I will make it round and blunt, if her ladyship pleases; no longer the tooth of a fish, but of a beautiful young lady as she is. Hey? Is the young lady displeased? Have I been too bold? Have I offended her?"_

 _The young lady, indeed, looked very angry_ , her fury mounting with every second. With one leap she crossed to the gate and stood before the peddler, _her face scarlet with anger, her lips quivering, and her whole slender form trembling from head to foot_.

 _"I hate you," she cried in a choked voice, stamping her foot on the floor. "I hate you — I hate you — I hate you —" a louder stamp with every assertion of hatred._

 _"How dares that mountebank insult me so? Where is your father, Diana? I shall demand redress from him. I would have the wretch tied up to the pump, and flogged with a cart whip, and burnt to the bones with the cattle brand!"_

The peddler, seeing that he had gone too far, absconded forthwith, his cur still howling at his heels. I put my arm around Carmilla's waist and drew her back into the shade of the orchard, soothing and gentling her as I would an injured horse. After many kisses and caresses, _her wrath subsided as suddenly as it had risen, and she gradually recovered her usual tone, and seemed to forget the little peddler and his follies_.

* * *

That evening, my father was unusually grave. On coming in, he told us that there had been another case very similar to Ruby's. Josie Pye, my schoolmate, had been _very ill, attacked very nearly in the same way, and was now slowly but steadily sinking_.

Of course, Carmilla and I had overheard so much at the funeral, but I had not realized that Josie hovered so near death.

"Did she . . ." I hesitated, worrying that my father would find me foolish. But I had to know. "Did Josie . . . see a ghost?"

"Josie's case is very sad," said my father, "but it _is strictly referable to natural causes_. _Still, people infect one another with their superstitions_. I have heard enough of ghosts and fiends, but Avonlea seems bent on repeating these _images of terror_. The truth is terrible enough without embellishment."

" _We are in God's hands_ ," said Mother. " _Nothing can happen without his permission, and all will end well for those who love him. He is our faithful creator; He has made us all, and will take care of us_."

"I met Dr. Blair at the post office," Father continued. "He was on his way to see Jane Andrews, who seems to suffer from a similar affliction. I asked him to take his supper here on his way home. _I want to know what he thinks about it, and what he thinks we had better do_."

We left my parents then, and sought refuge in the spare room, where we might speak freely without surveillance.

 _"Doctors never did me any good," said Carmilla._

 _"Then you have been ill?" I asked._

 _"More ill than ever you were," she answered._

 _"Long ago?"_

 _"Yes, a long time. I suffered from this very illness; but I forget all but my pain and weakness, and they were not so bad as are suffered in other diseases."_

 _"You were very young then?"_

 _"I dare say, let us talk no more of it. You would not wound a friend?"_

 _She looked languidly in my eyes, and passed her arm round my waist lovingly_.

 _"Why does your father like to frighten us?" said the pretty girl with a sigh and a little shudder._

 _"He doesn't, dear Carmilla, it is the very furthest thing from his mind."_

 _"Are you afraid, dearest?"_ she asked, stroking my cheek with her pale hand.

" _I should be very much if I fancied there was any real danger of my being attacked_ as Ruby and Josie and Jane have been."

 _"You are afraid to die?"_

 _"Yes, every one is."_

Carmilla held me close and sought my eyes with hers. When she spoke, caressing me, her voice was as low and sweet as ever.

 _"But to die as lovers may — to die together, so that they may live together . . . girls are caterpillars while they live in the world, to be finally butterflies when the summer comes; but in the meantime there are grubs and larvae, don't you see . . ."_

I did not see, not then. Or rather, what I saw was only Carmilla's beloved face, smiling into mine, and the flashing of her gray-green eyes.

* * *

 _Later, the doctor came, and was closeted with my father for some time._

I had always liked Dr. Blair. He was a cheerful man, about father's age, with gray in his hair and _his pale face shaved smooth as a pumpkin. He and papa emerged from the room together, and I heard Father laugh, and say as they came out:_

 _"Well, I do wonder at a wise man like you. What do you say to hippogriffs and dragons?"_

 _The doctor was smiling, and made answer, shaking his head._ _"Nevertheless life and death are mysterious states,_ George _, and we know little of the resources of either."_

 _And so they walked on, and I heard no more. I did not then know what the doctor had been broaching, but I think I guess it now._

* * *

*Keats, "Bright Star"


	6. A Wonderful Likeness

**A Wonderful Likeness**

* * *

It rained all the next day, so Carmilla and I closeted ourselves in the hidden recesses of Orchard Slope. Wind howled and droplets drummed against the roof, but we were safe and snug in the garret, where we picked over the detritus of several generations of Barrys. Carmilla was particularly delighted with an old paisley piano scarf in shades of turquoise and amethyst, which she wrapped around her shoulders like a shawl as she reclined languidly against a pile of dusty cushions.

For my own part, I became interested in a cache of old pictures, most of which I had never seen before. Their frames were old and musty, stacked one next to the other like books so that each one had to be extracted individually and held up to the light before its subject could be divined.

I shuffled through this catalogue, discovering a sampler worked by my great-aunt Josephine in her girlhood, a lithograph of the Duke of Wellington, and a soot-dark landscape that showed old Green Gables in its better days.

"My mother is distantly related to the Cuthberts," I explained for Carmilla's benefit. "The family is extinct, you understand, but her mother's mother was a cousin of theirs, and since they had no nearer relations, she inherited some of their possessions over the years."

Carmilla frowned at the landscape. "The trees are all wrong," she complained.

"They are?"

"Yes. Haven't you seen Green Gables? You must have noticed the stump of the enormous cherry tree on the east side of the house. That picture is a springtime scene; it should have a lovely cherry tree all cloaked in white."

I shrugged, nonplussed. "Perhaps it was painted after the cherry tree was destroyed."

"Perhaps."

I continued to rummage, holding up this picture or that for Carmilla's inspection. _I don't know that the pictures were very good, but they were, undoubtedly, very old, and some of them very curious also._ Many of them were portraits of men and women in old-fashioned garb, with funny lace collars and hats that defied description. I supposed that some of them must have come over from Scotland in the old days, being so ancient, but others evidently depicted residents of Avonlea, all long dead.

As I neared the end of the hoarde, I found _a small picture, about a foot and a half high, and nearly square, without a frame; but it was so blackened by age that I could not make it out_. I brought it to the window and dusted it gently with the corner of my apron until the figure emerged, as if surfacing from the gloomy depths of the Lake of Shining Waters.

 _It was quite beautiful; it was startling; it seemed to live. It was the effigy of Carmilla!_

 _"Carmilla, dear, here is an absolute miracle. Here you are, living, smiling, ready to speak, in this picture. Isn't it beautiful? And see, even the_ little freckles across your nose _."_

"Do you think so?" she asked, coming to look over my shoulder.

"Yes!" I exclaimed. "It is the most extraordinary thing! Come! We must clean it better."

Without waiting for her approbation, I hurtled down the stairs. Carmilla followed after me, her shawl wrapped tight around her shoulders, although the day was not cold.

"Father!" I called. "See what I have found in the garrett!"

Father and Mother both came to the kitchen, where I had found some clean rags and was industriously cleaning the portrait. Under the layer of dust, my friend's hair was as vivid as a flame, her eyes as lustrous as pearls. With every stroke, Carmilla's dear face and form were revealed with increasing clarity, until I thought that I could hardly tell the difference between the painting and the living, breathing girl at my elbow.

 _My father laughed, and said "Certainly it is a wonderful likeness," but he looked away, and to my surprise seemed but little struck by it, while I was more and more lost in wonder the more I looked at the picture._

 _"Will you let me hang this picture in my room, Father?" I asked._

 _"Certainly, dear," said he, smiling._

I looked to Carmilla and found _her fine eyes under their long lashes gazing on me in contemplation, and she smiled in a kind of rapture._

"Look," said Mother. " _Now you can read quite plainly the name that is written in the corner. The name is_ Marilla C., for Marilla Cuthbert, _this is a little coronet over and underneath A.D. 1781. I am descended from the_ Cuthberts _; that is, mamma was. None bear the name now, I believe. The family were ruined long ago, but the ruins of_ Green Gables are only about half a mile away."

"I have seen them," said Carmilla with one of her secret smiles.

When Father and Mother had returned to their own pursuits, Carmilla and I climbed the steps to my chamber to find a suitable spot for the portrait. With nails and wire, we attached it to the wall across from my bed, where it would be the first object I would behold every morning and the last to hold my gaze at night. We stood, _each with her arm about the other's waist_ , admiring the effect.

 _"_ Diana _, are you glad I came?" she almost whispered._

 _"Delighted, dear Carmilla," I answered._

 _"And you asked for the picture you think like me, to hang in your room," she murmured with a sigh, as she drew her arm closer about my waist, and let her pretty head sink upon my shoulder._

 _"How romantic you are, Carmilla," I said. "Whenever you tell me your story, it will be made up chiefly of some one great romance."_

 _She kissed me silently._

 _"I am sure, Carmilla, you have been in love; that there is, at this moment, an affair of the heart going on."_

 _"I have been in love with no one, and never shall," she whispered, "unless it should be with you."_

 _How beautiful she looked! Shy and strange was the look with which she quickly hid her face in my neck and hair, with tumultuous sighs, that seemed almost to sob, and pressed in mine a hand that trembled._

 _Her soft cheek was glowing against mine. "Darling, darling," she murmured, "I live in you, and you would die for me, I love you so."_

 _I started from her_. Certainly I was well used to Carmilla's passionate declarations by now, but I had never before entertained the idea that I should be prepared to die for her.

She felt my startlement and laughed. "Come now, Diana," she said, smiling prettily. "No one need really die. You know how my imagination can run away with me."

I relaxed in her arms, pressing my cheek back to hers. "Of course, darling. Forgive me. I suppose all this talk of Ruby and Josie and their spectral visitations has made me skittish."

At mention of my schoolmates, Carmilla seemed to go ever paler than usual and pulled away from me, dropping her arms to her sides.

"You need not fear," Carmilla assured me. "You appear to be in the very bloom of health."

"I cannot say the same for you, dearest," I replied, caressing her face. "Your cheek has gone all cold and you look a little faint. Are you sure you feel quite alright? You must come downstairs and take some tea."

 _"Yes. I will. I shall be quite well in a few minutes. Yes, do give me a little tea," answered Carmilla, as we approached the door._

We sat down to tea in the sitting room, but the ghastly pallor of her face did not improve as much as I would have liked.

 _"How do you feel now, dear Carmilla? Are you really better?" I asked._

 _I was beginning to take alarm, lest she should have been stricken with the strange epidemic that they said had invaded the country about us._

"I am quite well," she said. "Only tired. I do have spells when I am quite exhausted, but I assure you, Diana, that I am as hale now as I have been in many years, thanks to the hospitality and kind indulgence of your family."

 _"Father would be grieved beyond measure," I added, "if he thought you were ever so little ill, without immediately letting us know_. Please let us send for Dr. Blair if you are unwell. He is an excellent physician."

 _"I'm sure he is. I know how kind you all are; but, dear child, I am quite well again. There is nothing ever wrong with me, but a little weakness."_

With that, I let the matter drop, and soon we were chatting and laughing with such animated delight that no one who had not witnessed it could have told that she had suffered a momentary lapse in vivacity. And so we passed a rainy afternoon and thought no more of Ruby Gillis or Josie Pye.

* * *

That night, after I had bid Carmilla goodnight and heard her lock the spare room door behind me, I heard faint voices coming from my father's office. Something about the urgency of their tone alerted me to the pressing import of the discussion, so I extinguished my candle and crept to the door, peeping in at the keyhole.

Mother and Father stood by the fire, their faces illuminated by the dancing flames.

"I'm worried, George," Mother said, her dark eyes flashing in the firelight.

"Dr. Blair assures me that there is nothing to worry about," Father said. "Ruby Gillis was very ill for a long time and the others are only coincidence. Dr. Blair confirms that none of the other Andrewses have so much as a sniffle and that Gertie Pye Is not so ill as Josie. Still, we'll keep Diana and Anne at home until we're very sure the danger has passed."

Mother frowned. "It's not just that," she said. "I worry that the girls' imaginations are running away with them. You know Diana, _always straining her eyes over a book. She reads entirely too much_ . . ."

Father took Mother in his arms, patting her hair to soothe her. "Now, now, Elizabeth. That's my fault. Diana has been lonely for so long, I never could begrudge her the company of stories."

"But Anne goads her," Mother answered. "The other day, I heard them telling stories on the veranda, and such stories! All murder and gore and doomed love! I told Rachel about it and she was positively scandalized."

A gentle laugh indicated what Father thought of Mrs. Lynde's opinion on the matter.

"Don't laugh, George! With all this talk of ghosts and fiends, I'm worried that the girls will work themselves into hysterics."

"Let's not go borrowing trouble," Father said gently. "There's no harm in stories."

Perceiving that they would soon retire, I stole away from the door and crept up the shadowed stairs to my own solitary bed. Once, I would have said my prayers in the dark and crept into bed without bothering to relight my taper. Now, longing for one last glimpse of Carmilla, I rummaged in my bedside table for a match. Holding my candle before the portrait on my wall, I traced the curve of her rose-petal lips with the tip of my finger. Perhaps it was only the dancing candlelight or the over-active imagination my mother so feared, but I was quite sure that she smiled.


	7. A Very Strange Agony

**A Very Strange Agony**

* * *

On Saturday, word spread abroad through Avonlea that Josie Pye was dead. To make matters worse, Jane Andrews and Gertie Pye had sunk ever deeper into hysterical fits, insisting to anyone who would listen that they were plagued in the night by beasts that prowled and spectres that hovered around their beds. They complained of the most awful pains in the neck and breast, as if they were pierced by knitting needles. Reports came that Tillie Boulter and Em White had fallen ill as well, their symptoms beginning just as the others had.

In the afternoon, Mr. Allan came to Orchard Slope on horseback and called for Father, but refused to stay for tea.

"I'm sorry, George," he said. "I just came by to tell you that I'm cancelling church services for tomorrow. Dr. Blair has begun to wonder whether the distemper might be contagious after all and I don't want to take any chances."

"What about the Pye girl's funeral?" Mother asked.

Mr. Allan shook his head sorrowfully. "After I've spread word about the services, I'll be going over to the Pye farm to bury her. But no visitors, I'm afraid, only family. You understand, of course."

"Of course," Mother echoed.

Father walked Mr. Allan back to the horse he had left tied to the gate. From the window, I could not hear what they said, but I saw that Father looked very grave and Mr. Allan very sorrowful. Before he mounted his horse, Mr. Allan paused and placed his hand on my father's shoulder, both of them bowing their heads in a brief prayer.

Accordingly, we spent the day at home, and Sunday as well. Carmilla slept very late, as usual, and thus did not sit with us in the parlor as Father read from the Bible and Mother heard my Sunday School lesson.

Carmilla did appear for Sunday dinner, picking morosely at her food. I was at once alert to any possible sign of illness, imagining in the space of a moment the hundred different horrors of her imminent demise.

"Anne, are you feeling well?" Mother asked, evidently in sympathy with my own fears.

"Perfectly well, thank you," Carmilla answered.

Father cleared his throat. "I have been thinking that we might contact your guardian, in light of the current . . . uh . . . difficulty in Avonlea. Do you know where we might address a letter to her?"

 _"I cannot tell," she answered ambiguously, "but I have been thinking of leaving you; you have been already too hospitable and too kind to me. I have given you an infinity of trouble, and I should wish to take a carriage tomorrow, and post in pursuit of her; I know where I shall ultimately find her, although I dare not yet tell you."_

Father and Mother exchanged surprised looks that were nothing to my own horror at the prospect of losing my bosom friend.

"I can't let you do that, Anne," Father said. "I promised to take responsibility for you, and I can't let you leave until your guardian returns. I merely wished to inform her of the . . . uh . . . situation here. But you must not leave us. First because it is not safe and second because we would miss you terribly."

 _"Thank you, sir, a thousand times for your hospitality," Carmilla answered, smiling bashfully. "You have all been too kind to me; I have seldom been so happy in all my life before, as in your beautiful home, under your care, and in the society of your dear daughter."_

* * *

 _That evening, I accompanied Carmilla as usual to her room, and sat and chatted with her while she was preparing for bed._ I counted myself fortunate beyond all measure that my dear friend would unpin her hair before me and let me comb and brush it, sometimes with the silver-backed brush from the dresser, and sometimes with my own fingers. In those moments, I felt so wonderfully free with her that I could hardly bear to think that she still kept secrets from me. Certainly I kept none from her, and told her all my past and all my little dreams and fancies, inconsequential though they were.

On this night, Carmilla augmented our evening conversation by producing two glass tumblers and a bottle brimming with a ruby liquid that gleamed in the candlelight.

"I found this raspberry cordial in the pantry," she said, uncorking the bottle. "I don't suppose your mother will mind if we have just a little."

"Is suppose not," I answered, though I was not entirely convinced on that point. "Are you sure it is raspberry cordial? I don't remember seeing a bottle in the pantry."

Carmilla smiled. "You wouldn't have. It was on the top shelf, away in the back. I dare say your mother won't miss it either."

Just what, exactly, our guest was doing rummaging through the far recesses of the pantry is a question that I did not even think to ask, so delighted was I by the prospect of sharing a secret toast with my bosom friend. There was something dreadfully wicked and sacramental about the proposition. With a wine-dark drink in my hand, I could imagine away the prim tidiness of Orchard Slope and fancy myself instead in some candle-lit cathedral, lulled by the mysterious chanting of hooded figures wreathed in incense.

" _I love bright red drinks, don't you?_ " said Carmilla. " _They taste twice as good as any other color._ "

I agreed enthusiastically. The cordial was the nicest I had ever tasted, and soon we were laughing together more freely than ever we had before.

 _"Do you think," I said at length, "that you will ever confide fully in me?"_

"What do you wish to know?" she replied, pouring me another tumblerful.

"Everything!" I said, throwing myself across the bed. "Anything! I wish to know something about you that is true and not imagined. I wish to know you!"

Carmilla took my hand with infinite gentleness. "Darling Diana," she said, " _you do not know how dear you are to me. But I am under vows, no nun half so awfully, and I dare not tell my story yet, even to you. The time is very near when you shall know everything. You will think me cruel, very selfish, but love is always selfish; the more ardent the more selfish. How jealous I am you cannot know. You must come with me, loving me, to death; or else hate me and still come with me. and hating me through death and after. There is no such word as indifference with me._ "

I drew my hand away, thinking myself terribly wronged. "How you wound me, Carmilla," I murmured.

She regarded me for a moment, something wild and dangerous playing in the depths of her eyes, which, I was started to find, were glowing green as emeralds, with none of their usual tinge of gray.

"You are right, dearest," she said, her voice low and sweet as honey. "I will tell you something true about myself because I love you so and trust you with my very life, nay, with more than my life."

"Really and truly?"

"Really and truly."

She patted the pillows and bid me lay against them. Then she unpinned my hair and drew it through her hands as she spoke, the dark torrent of my tresses flowing through the white spikes of her fingertips.

"Have you ever been to a ball?" she asked.

"I've been to a New Year's dance at the Avonlea hall," I answered, knowing this was patently insufficient. "The Americans hold grand balls at White Sands in the summer, but Mother and Father say I must wait until I am 18 before I can attend one, and then only if some proper gentleman asks me."

Carmilla smiled. "I will tell you about my first ball. It was years ago, so that I must think very hard to call it to mind."

 _I laughed. "You are not so old. Your first ball can hardly be forgotten yet."_

" _I remember everything about it — with an effort. I see it all, as divers see what is going on above them, through a medium, dense, rippling, but transparent._ " She paused a moment, as if chasing her words carefully. " _Something occurred that night that has confused the picture, and made its colours faint. I was all but assassinated in my bed, wounded here," she touched her breast, "and never was the same since._ "

I was surprised to hear that she had experienced such a thing, particularly in light of the pain I still associated with my own childhood dream, and with the reports we had heard of Jane and Gertie. Curiosity surged through me.

" _Were you near dying?"_ I asked.

 _"Yes, very — a cruel love — strange love, that would have taken my life. Love will have its sacrifices. No sacrifice without blood."_

 _She was lying with her tiny hands buried in my rich wavy hair, her little head upon the pillow, and her glittering eyes following me, with a kind of shy smile that I could not decipher._

"I . . . I . . ." I stammered under the intensity of her gaze, "I am very glad that you are not dead."

"Are you?"

"Of course." All of a sudden I felt terribly shy under her eyes and wished to divert her to a new line of conversation. "The ball?" I asked. "Did you dance?"

She laughed prettily, throwing back the river of her flaming hair and exposing her milk-white throat. "Of course I danced, you goose! It was a lovely ball, with ladies in their finest silks and gentlemen attending them. I remember ice sculptures of swans and horses that melted over the course of the night and kept the platters of oysters and strawberries cool."

"What a magnificent occasion!" I exclaimed, picturing it in my mind. "Surely something so wonderful would never take place in poky little Avonlea."

"No," she said, her eyes sorrowful. "It is true that I have traveled a great deal these many years. And yet, Avonlea has always felt like home to me."

"Always?" I was perplexed, for surely she had only known our village a few weeks.

Carmilla smiled her entrancing smile. "It certainly feels like always," she said, eyes atwinkle. "Darling Diana, I could wander the earth for a century and never be happier than I have been with you these last weeks."

She sealed this declaration with a kiss which I, agreeing wholly that life seemed to have begun only scant weeks ago, returned most ardently.

Some time later, _I bid her good night, and crept from the room._

I had, by this time, adopted several of Carmilla's habits, not least of which was the custom of _locking my bedroom door at night, having taken into my head all her whimsical alarms about midnight invaders and prowling assassins._

 _Thus fortifed I might take my rest in peace. But dreams come through stone walls, light up dark rooms, or darken light ones, and their persons make their exits and their entrances as they please, and laugh at locksmiths._

 _I had a dream that night that was the beginning of a very strange agony._

I was in my room, in my very bed, of that I was quite sure. In the dark, I perceived something moving at the foot of my bed, and _soon saw that it was a sooty-black animal that resembled a monstrous cat_ , _to-ing and fro-ing with the lithe, sinister restlessness of a beast in a cage._ I was petrified and could not cry out, though its pace grew faster and faster and the room grew darker and darker. _When I could no longer see anything of it but its eyes, I felt it spring lightly on the bed. The two broad eyes approached my face, and suddenly I felt a stinging pain as if two large needles darted, an inch or two apart, deep into my breast._

I sat up with a scream. The room was still dark, but only the ordinary dark of nighttime, not the unnatural blackness of the nightmare. I began to relax, knowing myself to be awake and in my own bed, alone and safe.

Or so I thought.

 _In the next moment, I saw a female figure standing at the foot of the bed. It was in a dark loose dress, and its hair_ — which was no earthly color, but a fantastical, shining silver — _was down and covered its shoulders. A block of stone could not have been more still. There was not the slightest stir of respiration. As I stared at it, the figure appeared to have changed its place, and was now nearer the door; then, close to it, the door opened, and it passed out._

 _I was now relieved, and able to breathe and move. My first thought was that Carmilla had been playing me a trick, and that I had forgotten to secure my door. I hastened to it, and found it locked as usual on the inside. I was afraid to open it — I was horrified. I sprang into my bed and covered my head up in the bedclothes, and lay there more dead than alive till morning._

* * *

 **Author's Note:**

 **This story will have 12 chapters. The original _Carmilla_ has 16, but I'm consolidating a lot of General Spielsdorf's story, which does go on a bit.**


	8. Descending

**Descending**

* * *

I dared not tell my parents of my nightmare, nor of much that happened afterward. I feared that they might _fancy that I had been attacked by the mysterious complaint which had invaded our neighborhood. I had myself no misgiving of the kind, and I was afraid of alarming them_.

For three nights, I endured this torment. On the morning after the third, I resolved that I must tell my parents, whatever the cost.

Yet, when I went down to breakfast, my father greeted me with a sorrowful expression and informed me in grave and formal tones that Jane Andrews had succumbed the previous evening.

"Thank God you are still well, Diana," he said. "Come, let us pray together."

How could I disappoint him?

 _Carmilla came down rather later than usual the next day._ We asked for permission to walk together in the orchard, which was granted, provided that we stay near enough to the house that we might be called, and that we should speak to no one but one another. This being our intent, we gladly assented.

As soon as we were alone together, Carmilla turned her splendid eyes to me. " _I was so frightened last night_ ," she said, "and I am sure I would have been lost if it had not been for that charm I bought from the peddler. _I had a dream of something black coming round my bed, and I awoke in a perfect horror, and I really thought, for some seconds, I saw a dark figure near the chimneypiece, but I felt under my pillow for my charm, and the moment my fingers touched it, the figure disappeared, and I felt quite certain, only that I had it by me, that something frightful would have made its appearance, and, perhaps, throttled me, as it did those poor people we heard of_."

I was much amazed by her story. In hushed tones, _I recounted my adventure, at the recital of which she appeared horrified._

 _"And had you the charm near you?" she asked, earnestly._

"No," I said. " _I dropped it into a china vase in the sitting room, but I shall certainly take it with me tonight, as you have so much faith in it."_

Accordingly, I did so, and it was only by the presence of that charm that I summoned the courage to lie alone that night. Oh, that Carmilla would join me, or invite me to her bed! But she did not and I was not bold enough to ask. _In any case, I pinned the charm to my pillow. I fell asleep almost immediately, and slept even more soundly than usual all night._

 _The next night I passed as well. My sleep was delightfully deep and dreamless._

And yet, I was not untroubled.

I could say that it was the news of Gertie Pye's death than sank me into a deep _sense of lassitude and melancholy_ , but indeed, I barely realized the news when my father delivered it.

 _Every morning I felt the same lassitude, and a languor weighed upon me all day. I felt myself a changed girl. A strange melancholy was stealing over me, a melancholy that I would not have interrupted. Dim thoughts of death began to open, and an idea that I was slowly sinking took gentle, and, somehow, not unwelcome, possession of me. If it was sad, the tone of mind which this induced was also sweet._

 _Whatever it might be, my soul acquiesced in it._ _I would not admit that I was ill, I would not consent to tell my parents, or to have the doctor sent for._

In this state, I feared that I was no longer a charming companion for Carmilla. Gone were the days when I would walk with her to the Dryad's Bubble or the little round pool in the back field that she had christened Willowmere. Instead, I was content to lie on the sofa or in the soft, green grass of the cherry orchard, under fruit that had begun to rot, ungathered, for our hired man and maid had by this time gone home to look after their own families, and I had not the vitality to help bring in a harvest.

I feared that my languor would bore Carmilla, but in truth, _she became more devoted to me than ever, and her strange paroxysms of adoration more frequent. She used to gloat on me with increasing ardor the more my strength and spirits waned._

Soon, I began to experience strange sensations in my sleep. They were not dreams as my nightmare of the cat and the dark figure had been, but they were just as vivid, and left indelible impressions on both my mind and my body.

Deep in dreams, _I could hear one clear female voice, very deep, that spoke as if at a distance, slowly, and producing always the same sensation of indescribable solemnity and fear. Sometimes there came a sensation as if a hand was drawn softly along my cheek and neck. Sometimes it was as if warm lips kissed me, and longer and longer and more lovingly as they reached my throat, but there the caress fixed itself. My heart beat faster, my breathing rose and fell rapidly and full drawn; a sobbing, that turned into a lingering convulsion, in which my senses left me._

* * *

In the weeks that followed, the news from Avonlea was very bad. Scarcely any of the girls with whom I had played and studied were left untouched by the distemper, though their brothers and younger siblings invariably escaped its ravages. Mr. Allan came to see my father on several occasions, bringing word that there were now reports from Carmody and Grafton of girls who had never met Ruby Gillis or Jane Andrews the Pye girls, but had fallen ill nevertheless. Tillie Boulter and Em White died and were buried without public ceremonies. All Avonlea sequestered itself against the plague, and even Mrs. Lynde stopped coming to visit Mother. Mr. Allan travelled from house to house, praying with families, but all public gatherings were cancelled, including school, which would not convene. This was due in part to the fear of contagion, but also to the fact that our beloved teacher, Miss Stacey, was herself among the afflicted.

As summer turned toward autumn, _my sufferings told upon my appearance. I had grown pale, my eyes were dilated and darkened underneath, and the languor which I had long felt began to display itself in my countenance._

 _My father asked me often whether I was ill; but, with an obstinacy which now seems to me unaccountable, I persisted in assuring him that I was quite well._

 _In a sense this was true. I had no pain, I could complain of no bodily derangement. My complaint seemed to be one of the imagination, or the nerves, and, horrible as my sufferings were, I kept them, with a morbid reserve, very nearly to myself._

I reasoned that my troubles could not be the same as those that had afflicted the other girls. After all, they had sunk into death within days or a week of their infection, while my ordeal had already seen a month come and go. Besides, I had my charm, which Carmilla swore by as an infallible shield against any evil. Indeed, my first, terrifying nightmare had given way to the other sort of dreams which, though they prevented me from resting soundly, I was nevertheless loath to extinguish.

Thus, I did not confide in my parents.

This state of affairs continued unchanged all through September, until, _one night, instead of the voice I was accustomed to hear in the dark, I heard one, sweet and tender, and at the same time terrible, which said, "Beware the assassin."_

 _At the same time a light unexpectedly sprang up, and I saw Carmilla, standing, near the foot of my bed, in her white nightdress,_ her blazing hair utterly unmistakable. She was _bathed, from her chin to her feet, in one great stain of blood._

 _I wakened with a shriek, possessed with the one idea that Carmilla was being murdered. I remember springing from my bed, and crying for help._

My parents came running when I raised the alarm. Though crazed with fright, I was nonetheless able to communicate to them that Carmilla was in some danger. Whether they believed me I cannot say, but the urgency of my pleas prevailed and we hurried together to the spare room.

My father knocked, but his summons was unanswered.

"Anne?" he called, his voice edged with fear. "Anne? If you can hear me, please open this door."

When no answer came, he tried the doorknob, but found that it was locked fast.

"Anne?" he pounded upon the door, faster and harder, loud enough to wake the dead. "Anne!"

"Carmilla!" I shrieked, wild with terror, but all was vain.

"Stand back," Father said, handing the candle to Mother. "I'm going to force the lock."

Taking a fire iron from the hearth in the adjacent parlor, Father attempted to pry open the spare room door, splintering the wood of the jamb. On his third attempt, the apparatus gave way and the door swung wide.

Mother _held the light aloft in the doorway, and so we stared into the room._

 _We called her by name; but there was still no reply. We looked round the room. Everything was undisturbed. It was exactly in the state in which I had left it on bidding her good night._

 _But Carmilla was gone._


	9. Search

**Search**

* * *

At first, I entertained the desperate idea that Carmilla was not, in fact, gone. Perhaps the uproar of the house had frighted her and she had hid herself beneath the bed, or in the armoire, or had climbed out of one of the windows. My parents and I searched the room thoroughly, placing our hands into every space large enough to conceal a girl. Mother even opened the drawers of the dresser.

 _It was all to no purpose. Our perplexity and agitation increased. We examined the windows, but they were not only closed, but locked from the inside. I implored of Carmilla, if she had concealed herself, to play this cruel trick no longer — to come out and to end our anxieties. It was all useless._

My mind began to turn to wilder and wilder fancies. Had I only imagined bidding Carmilla good night before I retired? Did Orchard Slope have any secret passages of which I was unaware?

In great agitation, my parents and I began to search the rest of the house, lighting every lamp and candle we had to hand. We went together in a body, none of us wanting to be left alone. In every room, we called her name.

"Anne!"

"Carmilla!"

The garret and the cellar were the most terrible of all. Though I kept my back pressed resolutely to Mother's, still I could barely stand to peek out between my fingers enough to search.

By the time we had scoured every room, opened every trunk and cupboard, sounded every basin and tub, dawn was peeking rosy-gold over the eastern horizon. We were none of us in any fit state to eat anything, but forced ourselves to take a brace and worry down some tea while we waited for the sky to lighten.

"I suppose I must check the rainwater hogshead," Father said, looking pale. "And the barn. Diana, will you search the orchard?"

"Only if Mother comes with me," I said, trembling from tip to toe.

Mother clasped my hand and agreed, but when we had performed our allotted tasks, we were no nearer finding Carmilla than we had been at the start.

"I'll go for Mr. Allan," Father said, rubbing his hand forcefully across the back of his neck. "We may have to drag the pond."

My hands flew to my mouth in horror. The image of my dearest Carmilla, white and lifeless, floating in the murky depths of the Lake of Shining Waters was instantly seared into my brain, as indelible as if it had been etched there with a steel point.

Father went inside to dress and Mother went to the barn to saddle the old brown mare.

I stood alone in the yard, disconsolate, not sure whether to scream or sob. Whatever I chose, I thought I must do it inside, as the morning was cold and my nightdress thin and soaked with perspiration. Resolved at least to dress myself, I turned toward toward Orchard Slope.

Carmilla stood in the doorway.

I stared. Her white nightdress was pristine, and all her bright hair coming down was a river of fire over her paler skin.

 _I ran to her in an ecstasy of joy; I kissed and embraced her again and again. I ran to the dinner bell and rang it vehemently, to bring my parents to the spot and relieve their anxiety._

 _"Dear Carmilla, what has become of you all this time? We have been in agonies of anxiety about you," I exclaimed. "Where have you been? How did you come back?"_

 _"Last night has been a night of wonders," she said._

 _"For mercy's sake, explain all you can."_

" _I went to sleep as usual in my bed, with my doors locked_ ," she said. " _My sleep was uninterrupted, and, so far as I know, dreamless; but I woke just now_ in the garret, on the dusty cushions behind the door. I went back to the spare room and found that the door had been forced, and all the house quiet."

By this time, my parents had arrived. My mother clutched Carmilla to her breast and my father offered up a prayer of thanksgiving for her safe return.

In a trice, both Carmilla and I found ourselves ensconced in the kitchen with quilts draped around our shoulders, seated before cups of tea that my mother refilled after nearly every sip.

 _My father took a turn up and down the room, thinking. I saw Carmilla's eye follow him for a moment with a sly, dark glance._

Finally, he left off his pacing and came to sit at the table, where he took Carmilla's hand very kindly.

 _"Will you forgive me, my dear, if I risk a conjecture, and ask a question?_ " he said.

 _"Who can have a better right?" she said. "Ask what you please, and I will tell you everything. But my story is simply one of bewilderment and darkness. I know absolutely nothing. Put any question you please, but you know, of course, the limitations my guardian has placed me under."_

"Of course," Father conceded, smiling as if he would put her at her ease. "I do not mean to ask you anything of your past, except the very recent past. _Now, the marvel of last night consists in your having been removed from your bed and your room, without being wakened, and this removal having occurred apparently while the windows were still secured, and the door locked upon the inside. I will tell you my theory and ask you a question._ "

Carmilla nodded her assent.

 _"Now, my question is this. Have you ever been suspected of walking in your sleep?"_

 _"Never, since I was very young indeed."_

 _"But you did walk in your sleep when you were young?"_

 _"Yes; I know I did. I have been told so often by my old matron."_

 _My father smiled and nodded._

" _Well, what has happened is this: You got up in your sleep, unlocked the door_ , and walked in your sleep to one room or another. _Do you see, now, what I mean?_ "

 _"I do, but not all," she answered._

"But Father," I interjected, " _how do you account for her finding herself in the garrett, which we had searched so carefully?_ "

 _"She came there after we had searched it, still in her sleep, and at last awoke spontaneously, and was as much surprised to find herself where she was as any one else. I wish all mysteries were as easily and innocently explained as yours, Anne," he said, laughing. "And so we may congratulate ourselves on the certainty that the most natural explanation is one that involves no drugging, no tampering with locks, no burglars, or poisoners, or witches — nothing that need alarm Anne or anyone else, for our safety."_

"How very clever you are, Mr. Barry," Carmilla said, bestowing upon my father her most charming smile. "I'm terribly sorry for alarming you all. I wish nothing more than that I might be able to repay you for your kindness and concern toward me."

"We're only glad that you're safe, Anne," said Mother. "Though goodness knows you must be tired, with such a restless sleep."

Mother's eye fell on me, and there was nothing I could do to conceal my own weariness.

"That goes for you, as well, Diana," she said. "Both of you must go straight back to bed and get a good, honest sleep."

I rose from the table and wrapped my arms around my father. He kissed my hair and patted me consolingly on the back. "There's nothing to fear," her assured me. "Mother and I will be right here if you need us. Rest, darling."

And so Carmilla returned to her own bed and me to mine.

But it must be said, in fairness, that sleep eluded me. All that day and into the next night, I lay abed, thinking, and watching the painted gray-green eyes that watched me in return.


	10. The Doctor

**The Doctor**

* * *

After that, my parents took turns sleeping on a camp bed across the door of the spare room, _so that Carmilla would not attempt to make another such excursion without being arrested at her own door._ Carmilla expressed her thanks for this precaution, though she still insisted on locking her door from the inside. Father spent the whole day after our fright repairing the lock, which pleased my friend greatly.

A day or two later, Dr. Blair came to Orchard Slope. I believed that he had come to examine Carmilla, so I was much surprised when he asked me to step into father's office in company with himself and my mother.

Dr. Blair asked me various questions about my recent experiences. _I told him my story, and as I proceeded he grew graver and graver._

"Why haven't you told us any of this?" Mother asked with a dash of horror.

"There's little enough to tell," I replied. "Only a little weakness. I am not in distress."

Dr. Blair asked Mother to fetch Father. When they returned, Father smiled and said, _"I dare say, doctor, you are going to tell me that I am an old fool for having brought you here; I hope I am."_

 _But his smile faded into shadow as the doctor, with a very grave face, beckoned him_ and motioned for me to step into the hall.

Their conversation was low and earnest, and with their backs to the door, I could not hear more than their tone, which was by turns sorrowful and argumentative. I burned with curiosity, but my parents were aware that I was just beyond the door and kept their voices studiously hushed, even in their agitation.

After a time, my father called me back into the room.

 _Accordingly I approached, for the first time a little alarmed; for, although I felt very weak, I did not feel ill; and strength, one always fancies, is a thing that may be picked up when we please._

 _My father held out his hand to me, as I drew near, but he was looking at the doctor, and he said:_

 _"It certainly is very odd; I don't understand it quite._ Diana _, come here, dear; now attend to Doctor_ Blair _, and recollect yourself."_

Dr. Blair blinked at me over his spectacles, the very picture of kindness. I was not afraid.

 _"You mentioned a sensation like that of two needles piercing the skin, somewhere about your neck, on the night when you experienced your first horrible dream. Is there still any soreness?"_

 _"None at all," I answered._

 _"Can you indicate with your finger about the point at which you think this occurred?"_

 _"Very little below my throat — here," I answered._

 _I wore a morning dress, which covered the place I pointed to._

"Please, Diana," my mother said. "Let us take down your collar just for a moment so that Dr. Blair can examine the spot."

 _I acquiesced. It was only an inch or two below the edge of my collar._

 _"God bless me! So it is," exclaimed my father, growing pale._

 _"You see it now with your own eyes," said the doctor, with a gloomy triumph._

 _"What is it?" I exclaimed, beginning to be frightened._

 _"Nothing, my dear young lady, but a small blue spot, about the size of the tip of your little finger; and now," he continued, turning to my parents, "the question is what is best to be done?"_

 _"Is there any danger?" I urged, in great trepidation._

Dr. Blair and my parents exchanged a haunted look.

"No, Diana," Father said after a very long pause. "There can be no danger from such a little bruise. You will be perfectly well in a matter of days as long as we follow Dr. Blair's advice."

"What is your advice, Dr. Blair?" I asked, feeling myself likely to swoon at any moment.

"It is very simple," Dr. Blair explained. "You must not be left alone, not even for one moment. This is indispensable. And you must take vigorous walks for exercise and eat hearty fare. Begin with some beef tea if you cannot manage meat and potatoes at first. Bread and tea as well."

My parents nodded. "Diana will observe your orders to the letter," Mother promised. "Won't you dear."

The prescription seemed mild enough, so I nodded my assent.

"I believe there is another young lady at Orchard Slope?" Dr. Blair inquired.

"Yes, our guest, Anne Shirley," said Father. "She is still asleep, but I would like to have her examined as well. Perhaps you will be so good as to return tomorrow?"

Dr. Blair agreed, swearing solemnly that he would return the next day, and then going off to examine his other patients.

* * *

Carmilla slept late that day — very late, even for her. I read a little and tried to worry down the food that Mother prepared for me, but my apathy was such that I could hardly stomach a mouthful.

Father rode into Avonlea to fetch the mail, which he had neglected for several days, and returned a little after noon in a state of excitement.

"I have a letter from Mr. Blythe!" he said. "He will return to Avonlea today!"

 _He did not look pleased, as he used when a guest, especially one so much loved as_ Mr. Blythe _, was coming. On the contrary, he looked as if he wished him at the bottom of the_ Gulf _. There was plainly something on his mind which he did not choose to divulge._

"Father," said I, suddenly laying my hand on his arm, and looking, I am sure, imploringly in his face, "Does the doctor think me very ill?"

"No, Diana _,"_ he said, smoothing my hair. _"He thinks, if right steps are taken, you will be quite well again_."

 _"But do tell me, Father," I insisted, "what does he think is the matter with me?"_

 _"Nothing; you must not plague me with questions," he answered, with more irritation than I ever remember him to have displayed before; and seeing that I looked wounded, I suppose, he kissed me, and added, "You shall know all about it in a day or two; that is, all that I know. In the meantime you are not to trouble your head about it."_

This was hardly a satisfactory answer and did little to set my mind at ease. Neither did Father's brief, whispered conference with Mother, nor his abrupt announcement that he and I would begin on one of Dr. Blair's prescribed walks right at that very moment.

"Can't we wait for Carmilla?" I asked.

"I will wait for her," Mother smiled. "I'll make up a picnic, and when she wakes, she and I will bring it to you."

I was perplexed by the suddenness of these arrangements, but they were not displeasing to me. It had been too long since I had a walk with my Father, and I hoped that perhaps I might learn more of the secrets he refused to divulge within the confines of Orchard Slope.

Accordingly, I fetched my straw hat and met Father on the veranda. I placed my hand in the crook of his arm and set off down the road, headed west.

It was a very pretty walk, and having been absent from it for some days, I found that I gazed upon its beauty with fresh eyes. Never had the Haunted Wood smelled so crisp and fresh; never had the Dryad's Bubble burbled with more cheer. I stopped at intervals to gather handfuls of wildflowers from the roadside, which seemed to please my father.

We had not gone more than a quarter mile when a clatter of hooves on the roadway made me turn suddenly. Imagine, if you can, my surprise to see the horse I knew as Silverspot, and on her back, our dear friend Mr. Blythe! He was heavy burdened by a pack on his back that rattled and clanked with various tools; I could see two spade handles, a hand scythe, and a multitude of other implements as if he meant to do heavy work.

"John!" my father called, waving.

Mr. Blythe reined in his mount and slipped from the saddle to embrace Father. "George!" he exclaimed. "And Diana! I've reached you in time, then?"

I looked wonderingly from one drawn face to the other, but found no answers there.

"Indeed," Father said, pumping Mr. Blythe's arm. "I think that you have much to tell us."

"I do," Mr. Blythe said, nodding gravely. "And I'll tell you everything when we get there."

"Where are we going?" I asked.

Father and Mr. Blythe exchanged a significant look.

"To Green Gables."


	11. The Story

**The Story**

* * *

It had been three years since we had last seen Mr. Blythe. Before he left Avonlea, he was wracked with coughing so often that he was pale and stooped. Three years on the prairies had restored his health to a marvelous degree, and although he was still thin, his tall form stood erect and his broad shoulders unbowed.

Despite this return to health, there was a gauntness about his face. His hazel eyes, _always penetrating, now gleamed with a sterner light from under his shaggy grey eyebrows. It was not such a change as grief alone usually induces, and angrier passions seemed to have had their share in bringing it about._

As we walked the long way 'round by the road, Mr. Blythe began to talk with his usual directness, of the bereavement he had sustained in the death of his beloved daughter Bertha. _He then broke out in a tone of intense bitterness and fury, inveighing against the "hellish arts" to which she had fallen a victim, and expressing, with more exasperation than piety, his wonder that Heaven should tolerate so monstrous an indulgence of the lusts and malignity of hell._

I did not understand his strange speech. By the expression on my father's face, he did not know the particulars either, although something of the matter must have been contained in Mr. Blythe's recent letter.

 _"Can you tell us what happened, John?" Father asked._

 _"I should tell you all with pleasure," said_ Mr. Blythe _, "but you would not believe me."_

 _"Why not?"_

"You're a logical man, George," he answered. "You will believe what I can prove, but you may not believe what I have seen."

Father was quiet for a long moment. Then he ventured tentatively, "I have seen enough strange things recently to make me trust in your experience, John."

Mr. Blythe let out a harsh, wild laugh, such as I can only term a cackle. "Oh, but you have not heard it yet, George. See what you think when my story is all told."

 _I saw my father, at this point, glance at_ Mr. Blythe, _with, as I thought, a marked suspicion of his sanity._

Mr. Blythe _did not see it, luckily. He was looking gloomily and curiously into the glades and vistas of the woods that were opening before us._

"First, I will tell you why I insisted that we go to Green Gable immediately," he said. "Do you know the name of Cuthbert?"

Father nodded. "Yes. Elizabeth is related to them, a cousin of sorts."

"Indeed. My own grandmother was a Cuthbert and their cursed blood flows through my veins."

At this extraordinary pronouncement, my own blood seemed to curdle. If Mr. Blythe's blood were cursed, did that mean that mine was as well?

"There have been no true Cuthberts for decades," Father said in the gentle voice he used to soothe me when I was ill. "The house is ruined and nothing remains but a few graves."

"Graves, yes," Mr. Blythe said gruffly. "I will tell you what I mean to do. _I mean to unearth some of those fine people. I hope, by God's blessing, to accomplish a pious sacrilege here, which will relieve our earth of certain monsters, and enable honest people to sleep in their beds without being assailed by murderers. I have strange things to tell you, my dear friend, such as I myself would have scouted as incredible a few months since."_

My father looked at him with alarm. "John . . ."

" _We have been very old friends_ , George," Mr. Blythe said. "You know how much I adored Bertha. After Sarah died, Bertha was all I had in the world, my light and my joy. _That is all gone. The years that remain to me on earth may not be very long, but by God's mercy I hope to accomplish a service to mankind before I die, and to serve the vengeance of Heaven upon the fiends who have murdered my poor child in the spring of her hopes and beauty!_ "

"Tell us, John," Father said, his voice thick will feeling. "What happened to Bertha?"

I was quite desperate to know the meaning of all this, and was very much gratified when Mr. Blythe took a long, slow breath, and began to speak:

"Three years ago, Dr. Blair advised me to go to a sanatorium in Alberta for my health. I could not bear to be parted from my dear Bertha, nor she from me, and so I arranged to bring her with me. The director of the sanatorium was very sympathetic and arranged for us to have a little cottage on the grounds, not so very far from the main building. The prairie air did wonders for my lungs, and in time I began to recover. All this past year my health has been so much improved that Bertha and I began to hope that we might soon come home to Avonlea.

As you know, Bertha was a great comfort and support to me throughout my illness. A sanatorium is no place for a young girl to pass the bloom of her youth, and I felt very sorry over Bertha having to attend me there. So you may imagine my delight when she made a friend.

About six months ago, she encountered a girl of just her age walking in the gardens of the sanatorium. Bertha told me that the girl's guardian was a new patient and that she, too, was very lonely. From the first day, the two were fast friends — kindred spirits, as Millarca used to say."

"Millarca?" Father asked.

"Indeed, she called herself Millarca. At first, I was not very curious about her. The girls would spend their days in the gardens or roaming the nearby prairies, and I was pleased that Bertha had found such a charming companion.

One day, a woman came to sit beside me as I took the fresh air on a bench in the garden. She was a striking personage, and though I had not seen her before, I could not help but feel that she was familiar in some way. She introduced herself as Millarca's guardian and we fell to talking about all manner of things. I found her to be a most agreeable companion. However, she made a startling request:

'Forgive me, sir,' she said. 'I cannot help but notice that our girls have formed a fast friendship in just a few short days. I hesitate to ask it of you, but the doctors tell me that I must undergo an intensive treatment that will keep me confined inside a breathing apparatus for some days. Would you be so kind as to take my dear Millarca home to your cottage with you and your daughter? I will come to fetch her as soon as I am finished with my treatment.

 _This was, all things considered, a strange, not to say, an audacious request. She in some sort disarmed me, by throwing herself entirely upon my chivalry. At the same moment, by a fatality that seems to have predetermined all that happened, Bertha came to my side, and, in an undertone, besought me to invite her new friend, Millarca, to pay us a visit. She had just been sounding her, and thought, if her guardian would allow her, she would like it extremely._

 _At another time I should have told her to wait a little, until, at least, we knew who they were. But I had not a moment to think in._

So I consented."

At this point, Mr. Blythe paused in his story, as if overcome with emotion. He drew a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed his brow, sniffling several times before he was able to continue.

" _That day Millarca came home with us," he said. "I was only too happy, after all, to have secured so charming a companion for my dear Bertha. Millarca became very intimate with us, and amused us with lively descriptions and stories of most of the great people_ whom she had known or imagined.

 _There soon, however, appeared some drawbacks. In the first place, Millarca complained of extreme languor and she never emerged from her room till the afternoon was pretty far advanced. In the next place, it was accidentally discovered, although she always locked her door on the inside, that she was undoubtedly sometimes absent from her room. This convinced me that she walked in her sleep. But this hypothesis did not solve the puzzle. How did she pass out from her room, leaving the door locked on the inside? How did she escape from the house without unbarring door or window?_

 _In the midst of my perplexities, an anxiety of a far more urgent kind presented itself._

 _My dear Bertha began to lose her looks and health, and that in a manner so mysterious, and even horrible, that I became thoroughly frightened._

 _She was at first visited by appalling dreams; then, as she fancied, by a specter, sometimes resembling Millarca, sometimes in the shape of a beast, indistinctly seen, walking round the foot of her bed, from side to side._

 _Lastly came sensations. One, not unpleasant, but very peculiar, she said, resembled the flow of an icy stream against her breast. At a later time, she felt something like a pair of large needles pierce her, a little below the throat, with a very sharp pain. A few nights after, followed a gradual and convulsive sense of strangulation; then came unconsciousness."_

 _You may guess how strangely I felt as I heard my own symptoms so exactly described in those which had been experienced by the poor girl who, but for the catastrophe which followed, would have been at that moment a visitor at_ Orchard Slope. _You may suppose, also, how I felt as I heard him detail habits and mysterious peculiarities which were, in fact, those of our beautiful guest, Carmilla!_

Tentatively, my father asked, "John, can you describe this girl, this . . . Millarca? That is to say, what can you say of her appearance?"

"Oh, a most striking girl," Mr. Blythe answered. "Tall and slender, with green eyes and hair the color of carrots! No, there is no mistaking Millarca."

My father had made an odd, choking sound. I was alarmed to see that his face had gone very gray, as if perhaps his heart were failing. Nevertheless, he cleared his throat and said, "Go on, John. I fear we must hear the end of this sad tale."

Mr. Blythe nodded, his face as long and sorrowful as ever.

"There is not much more to tell," he said with agony writ plain across his face. "My dear Bertha sank away slowly until I could not call her back. On the day she died, Millarca vanished from our cottage and from the sanatorium. When I went in search of her guardian, the director told me that they had no such patient under their care.

I buried sweet Bertha all in white, an innocent until the end. And since that day, I have traveled many miles, chasing whispers, hunting for the ghoul who brought such misery to me and mine."

My father was frowning so deeply that the expression seemed likely to remain etched in his face for all time.

"Forgive me, John," he said. "I do not doubt your account — no! Believe me, I do not! But I must ask, for the sake of absolute clarity: Is it not possible that Bertha succumbed to a natural illness, perhaps the very consumption for which you yourself sought treatment?"

Mr. Blythe laughed, a cruel, unhinged sound that made my flesh creep over my bones. "Indeed not!" he hissed. "It was not consumption that stole my Bertha from me, but the hell-demon Millarca! Do not doubt me, for I have learned much in my travels.

In Kingsport, I found a professor at the university who had made a study of demons, and in particular of the vampire, who drains the life from her victims under cover of night. Most people thought him quite mad, but I heard the sense in his words. I told him of Millarca and he knew immediately of whom I spoke.

He took me to his office, where he showed me many strange and wonderful documents, one of which was a map of Prince Edward Island. Imagine my surprise when I saw that Avonlea was given as much importance on his map as Charlottetown! Indeed, the professor told me that Avonlea is well known among those who study the occult, for it was once the home of the Cuthberts."

At that moment, we came to the ruined gate at the end of the lane that led up to Green Gables. The lane beyond the gate was rough and overgrown, leading to a forest of sumac and brambles that had grown up around the ruins of the old house. The Lombardies that once must have stood as stately sentinels were ragged now, and the willows hugely overgrown until they resembled monsters with a thousand swaying arms, looming over the remains of the gabled roof.

"And this was once the home of the Cuthberts!" said Mr. Blythe. " _It was a bad family, and here its bloodstained annals were written. It is hard that they should, after death, continue to plague the human race with their atrocious lusts._ "

Father and I stared, hardly knowing what to make of this speech and Mr. Blythe's extraordinary story.

"So you think that Millarca is connected to the Cuthberts?" Father ventured as we climbed the hill toward the house.

"Indeed." Mr. Blythe said, drawing a paper from his pocket. "The professor made it very plain. Look."

He held out the page, upon which was written in large, black letters:

MARILLA C

MILLARCA

CARMILLA

"You see," he said, eyes alight. "They are all three of them one and the same. She may try to hide herself in anagrams, but she is none other than Marilla C, last of the true Cuthberts, who walks the earth by many names, seeking her victims! I have come to find her grave and put a stop to her reign of horror!"

For my own part, I could not take the meaning of Mr. Blythe's words. How could Millarca and my Carmilla really be this long-dead Marilla C? My beloved, beautiful friend was no monster, and neither had she ever offered me the least injury. A vampire? I could not realize it.

Intent on his mission, Mr. Blythe did not stop at the house, but continued past it, seeking out the huge willow that shaded the tombs of the Cuthberts. He took a hand scythe from his pack and began to hack at the vegetation that grew over and around the gate, keeping it shut as effectively as any lock.

"We have a portrait, at home, marked Marilla C.; should you like to see it?" asked my father, seemingly hoping to divert Mr. Blythe from his goal.

 _"Time enough, dear friend," replied_ Mr. Blythe, breathing hard with the effort of his labors _. "I believe that I have seen the original; and one motive which has led me to you earlier than I at first intended, was to explore the grave which we are now approaching."_

"What! See Marilla C!" _exclaimed my father. "Why, she has been dead more than a century!"_

" _Not so dead as you fancy, I am told," answered_ Mr. Blythe. " _There remains to me but one object which can interest me during the few years that remain to me on earth, and that is to wreak on her the vengeance which, I thank God, may still be accomplished by a mortal arm_."

 _"What vengeance can you mean?" asked my father, in increasing amazement._

 _"I mean, to decapitate the monster," he answered, with a fierce flush, and a stamp that echoed mournfully through the_ undergrowth _, and his clenched hand was at the same moment raised, as if it grasped the handle of an axe, while he shook it ferociously in the air._

 _"What?" exclaimed my father, more than ever bewildered._

 _"To strike her head off."_

 _"Cut her head off!"_

 _"Aye, with a hatchet, with a spade, or with anything that can cleave through her murderous throat!"_

Mr. Blythe's hazel eyes, normally so kind and placid, burned with an intensity that seemed likely to burn holes in the objects of his gaze. With one last furious stroke, he cut away the bittersweet vines that held the gate closed, and kicked it open, lifting it from its very hinges. Panting, he stepped into the little graveyard, with Father and I at his heels.

It was a small space, only twenty feet square, with perhaps a dozen old-fashioned gravestones carved from slate and red sandstone. Many of these had been effaced by time and weather, but not all.

In the center of the graveyard stood a tall, flat headstone of gray slate, most wonderfully embellished with grim carvings: a crowned skeleton holding the moon in one hand and the sun in the other, attended by bats and wreathed in the sinuous body on an ouroboros, the snake that eats its own tail and thus goes round and round unto infinity. The words engraved beneath this forbidding icon were obscured by rain-splattered mud, dry now, that flaked away when Mr. Blythe brushed it with his hand. There, etched deep in the stone were letters that filled me with a mortal terror:

MARILLA C


	12. Green Gables

**Green Gables**

* * *

Mr. Blythe shrugged off his pack, letting it clatter to the ground. With a look of grim determination, he freed two spades from the mess and offered one to my father.

"John!" Father spluttered. "Surely you aren't in earnest?"

"I am indeed. I will unearth Marilla Cuthbert, who has been dead for a century. See what it says here on the stone? Marilla C, born in 1765, died in 1781. If that is true, and nothing amiss, we shall find her bones. If, however, my suspicions are correct, you shall look upon the very face of evil."

With that, Mr. Blythe began to dig, tossing aside shovelfuls of earth. I wrung my hands in agitation, looking anxiously over my shoulder. Of course he would not find Carmilla in the grave! She was on her way to us now, with Mother, bringing a picnic supper for us to share!

Yet, Mr. Blythe dug ever on, clods of earth flying in a frenzy. At length, my father began to help him, I suspect more out of concern for his friend's new-recovered health than from a desire to behold the earthly remains of Marilla C.

They dug together for a long time as the sun slipped down the sky, exchanging the golden, slanting sunshine of an early autumn afternoon for sunset tints of orange and russet that recalled Carmilla's fiery beauty. Oh, where was she? And where was Mother? Perhaps I ought to have gone back to Orchard Slope to find them. I was on the point of suggesting such an endeavor when I heard the hollow thump of a spade upon hollow wood.

I hurried to the edge of the muddy pit and offered a hand to my father, who was splattered and exhausted with his efforts. He clambered onto the grass, collapsing in a panting heap.

Mr. Blythe exhibited no such fatigue. Indeed, some internal fire lit his hazel eyes so that they burned in the encroaching dim of evening.

"We have you now, Marilla," he said, hefting his axe as if he would smash in the coffin lid.

For a terrible moment, the blade hovered, the last gleam of the setting sun glinting along its edge. I covered my eyes, not knowing what I feared more: a skeleton or my dear Carmilla's lovely face.

With a crash, the axe smashed through the long-buried wood, splintering it into a thousand shards. I peered through my fingers with the utmost trepidation, only to see Mr. Blythe standing over the ruin, his breath coming in deep gasps, his face a ghastly rictus of shock.

The coffin was empty.

"There is nothing there, John," Father said gently. "She has turned to dust and ash, just as she should have."

"No!" Mr. Blythe shouted. He sunk the axe into the coffin again and again, splitting the lid and tearing away the shards to reveal the lining. Amid the dirt and splinters, the cloth was clearly visible. Perhaps it had once been white, but now it was stained a rich, fresh red.

"She has decayed," Father reasoned.

Mr. Blythe stared up out of the grave with wild eyes. "Use you eyes, George! There are no bones here! Only blood! She is not here because she is . . ."

All color drained from Mr. Blythe's face. He raised a trembling arm and pointed to a spot over Father's shoulder.

". . . there."

I whirled and followed the line of his extended finger back toward the ruins of Green Gables. Indeed, two figures were visible, standing in the eastern part of the upper story, in what might once have been a gable room before the roof fell away. Now it was open to the night air and the two figures were plainly visible to us, outlined in the silver light of the rising moon. Even from this distance, it was plain that one had hair the color of flames.

"It is Carmilla!" I squealed, relieved. "Carmilla and Mother have come at last"

I ran at once for the graveyard gate, overwhelmed with gratitude at this excuse to escape Mr. Blythe's ravings. Dimly, I heard my father call, "No! Diana! Wait!" but his voice could not detain me.

Fleet as a deer, I dashed over the trail we had cut earlier, stumbling when the long grasses reached up to catch me by the toes and tearing through the branches that grasped at my skirts. When I reached the veranda, I leapt over the sagging steps and through the door that hung from its hinges.

"Carmilla!" I called as I mounted the swaying stairs. "Mother!"

When I gained the landing at the top of the stairs, I was brought up short by a gaping hole in the floor. No matter; a single beam remained intact. I took a deep breath and stepped out, one delicate footfall after another, just as we used to do in the old days of walking board fences. I had never been one for the dares, always too timid to follow where Josie or Gertie led, but now my darling Carmilla was on the other side of the chasm. She would set everything to rights, if only I could reach her.

Below me, the pounding of boots on the veranda signaled the arrival of Father and Mr. Blythe. They were too late. I was at the east room door, the doorknob turning under my hand, the door swinging open before me . . .

I had expected Carmilla.

I had not expected Carmilla and Bertha.

They stood side-by-side, hands entwined, their white dresses and flowing hair ruffled by a new-blowing breeze, though they stood completely still otherwise. As in my dreams, I could detect no movement, not even as of respiration. Behind them, the rising moon shone like a pearl through the white-blossomed limbs of an enormous cherry tree, pale and ethereal as Carmilla's outstretched hand.

There was no mistaking her. She was my Carmilla and no other, her hair as vivid, her eyes as starry as ever they were. Nor was there any doubt that Bertha Blythe was herself. I had not seen her for three years, but she was still a tall, striking girl, her mane of rich brown curls was the same, her hazel eyes the very image of her father's. If she seemed a bit paler than I remembered her, perhaps it was only a trick of the moonlight.

I stepped over the threshold, my own hand poised to take Carmilla's.

"No!" my father called from the top of the stairs. "Diana!"

In a moment, my father and Mr. Blythe had crossed the gaping hole in the floor. They reached me and stopped, gasping, though with shock or exertion I could not have said.

Mr. Blythe staggered against the doorframe. "Bertha . . ." he whispered, unbelieving. Then, "No! No, not Bertha!"

"Good evening, Mr. Blythe," Carmilla smiled. "Truly, I must thank you for your dereliction. I feared you might take precautions when you buried my darling Bertha. You could have struck off her head or buried her with a stake through her heart, rather than crowned in flowers. But your tender heart overruled all your reason."

"I couldn't!" Mr. Blythe declared, sinking to his knees. "God help me, I couldn't believe it! Not my Bertha!"

Bertha smiled, grinned even, and her eyes seemed to twinkle. "I am no longer yours, Father," she said.

Still smiling, she turned to Carmilla, bending her head slightly to meet her upturned face. The kiss that passed between them lingered long and longer, until I felt my own blood stir. Without thinking, I took a step toward them.

"No!" my father called. "Diana! Stay back!"

Carmilla broke the kiss and reached again for me with her slender, lily-white hand.

"Diana, huntress, goddess of the moon," she said, smiling so that her teeth glimmered with a light that had no earthly source. "Did I ever tell you how pleased I was that your mother, lacking as she was in any sort of imagination, bestowed upon you such a _perfectly lovely name_? I don't know if I could have loved you half as well if she had given you a plain, sensible name like Jane or Mary."

I blushed under this praise, but stopped when a terrible thought occurred to me.

"Where is my mother?" I asked. "Is she not with you?"

Carmilla and Bertha exchanged the smile of conspirators. "You needn't worry about her," Carmilla said very, very sweetly. "Ever again."

A chill ran up my arms, but a thrill as well, and I remembered what Carmilla had said about the shiver of pleasure she felt when something was just exactly right. Perhaps this is what she meant.

"No!" my father called again. "Elizabeth! What have you done to her? You demon! You murderer! You vampire!" He stood, but his legs quavered with cramps from his recent exertions, and he wobbled as uncertainly as a newborn colt.

"Vampire!" Carmilla tittered behind her hand. "Why, Mr. Barry, you mustn't let the neighbors hear you raving so. As you yourself know very well, my only affliction is sleepwalking!"

At this, Bertha joined her in fits of giggles, resting her forehead against Carmilla's crown with such obvious affection that my heart leapt to join them and share even a sliver of their devotion.

"Please," my father begged. "What did Elizabeth ever do to you?"

"To me?" Carmilla asked, arching a copper brow. "Better to ask what she did to Diana."

Father looked to me in confusion. Surely my mother had never been guilty of any transgression toward me, saving occasional strictness.

"Don't you see?" Carmilla continued. "She would have made Diana's world so small! She was jealous of her education, even grudged her the books that were her only escape into the realms of imagination! She would have made Diana walk her own narrow path, whether she wanted to or no. And you would have helped! You had her imprisoned at Orchard Slope just as surely as my darling Bertha was imprisoned at that wretched sanatorium, spending her precious life in serving others. But the Cuthbert blood runs in her veins as surely as it runs in mine, calling one to the other. We were never meant to be confined, none of us!"

Father goggled, but I felt such a surge of delight at my dear friend's words that I was nearly lifted from my feet. It was true. She had come to me, had renamed my landscape and spoken to me in the language of dreams and diamond sunbursts, rather than butter and eggs.

"Come, Diana," Bertha said. "Come with us."

"No!" my father shouted. "You will not have my daughter!"

Carmilla fixed him with an icy glare, the green fire of her eyes blazing. "The choice is hers."

I barely dared to breathe as I looked from my father's ashen face to Carmilla's shining eyes. It was not a difficult choice. Stepping forward, I reached out both my hands; Carmilla took one, Bertha the other.

"Demon!" cried Mr. Blythe. "Fiend!"

Struggling to his feet, he pulled a long knife from a sheath at his waist and raised it high. He took one lurching step toward us, then another, his eye fixed resolutely on Carmilla.

He never reached her. Bertha stepped between them and with a speed that knew no earthly limitations, sank her teeth deep into her father's throat. He fell at once, and I fancied that his death was soundless, though perhaps I could hear nothing but the roaring in my own ears. A look of vast surprise stayed etched on his features even after his life had drained from the puncture marks, the dusty floorboards soaked in blood so dark it seemed black.

My own father sank to the floor beside his friend, placing a hand to Mr. Blythe's inert chest. He wore a look of utter bewilderment that tugged at my still-beating heart.

"Father," I said, stepping away from my companions and toward him.

"No! Stay back!" He scuttled away from me, moving across the floor like a crab. "No!"

"Father!" I called again, following, wishing him to know that though I had chosen my path, I did not wish him ill.

He backed away from me again, over the threshold, his eyes wide with terror as I advanced . . .

. . . and then he was falling . . . falling . . . falling through the gaping floor. He landed with a terrible crunch, his limbs at odd angles, his face turned upward toward the moon, though he had fallen chest-down.

I gasped, but there was nothing to be done.

Four cool hands drew me back from the edge of the pit, petting my hair, soothing me, twining around my waist to anchor me against the dizzy world.

"Darling Diana," Carmilla smiled, her hand gentle against my cheek. "Do you really wish to join us?"

I did. God help me, I did.

"What must I do?" I asked, trying to keep the quaver out of my voice.

Bertha laughed. "Why, nothing, silly! Just be your own dear self and that will be enough for us."

"There is one small thing," Carmilla said, clasping her hands under her chin. "If you wish for us to be together forever, there is a small . . . ceremony."

"A ceremony?"

"Yes," she said. "I will kiss you here . . ." her fingers traced a line beginning in the soft flesh behind my ear ". . . and here . . ." down, down past the hollow of my throat ". . . and here . . ." lower still ". . . and here."

"Yes," I breathed.

"And then you will kiss me the same."

Was that all? It was only what I had longed for these many weeks. I nodded.

"Are you ready?" she asked.

"I am."

I cannot describe that kiss. _Thrill — thrill — you'd have to say 'thrill' a hundred times before you could express how thrilling it was_. It was if all my blood had been replaced with quicksilver, flowing in ever-shifting, ever-changing shapes that were never less than completely perfect.

When I opened my eyes at last, I was surprised to find that the silver light of night had turned to a brilliant gold. The ghostly cherry tree, so pale a few moments ago, burst forth with lively color, its blossoms shot through with pink, and its leaves a green more vivid than it had ever been in life. I looked beyond it and beheld Avonlea as I had never seen it before. It was not day — the moon still hung heavy in the sky — but all the world was clothed in color: the brilliant emerald of the Lombardy poplars, the bright copper of the road, the shifting sapphire of the Lake of Shining Waters, and the deep amethyst of the Gulf beyond.

"Is this the way you always see it?" I marveled.

"It is," Carmilla smiled and kissed me tenderly. "And now it is yours as well."

"Forever," Bertha said, following suit.

I could hardly believe my fortune. My old life was nothing more than a dream, receding rapidly with every passing moment. There was only the future in that wide, vivid world. Carmilla took one of my hands and Bertha the other and we stepped out over the cherry tree, over the _winding paths fringed with the sweetest flowers that ever bloomed, and over haunted meadows where winds of hope and memory blew._

* * *

 **The End**

* * *

 **Author's Note:**

 **Ok, that is not how _Carmilla_ ends. In the original, various dudes work together to behead Carmilla and banish her wickedness forever; Laura gets sent to Italy, where she spends the next decade mooning over lost Carmilla. Given the choice between punishing Carmilla and letting a teenage lesbian vampire trio loose in the world, I think you know what I was always going to choose.**

 **Thanks for reading!**


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